Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull Read online

  “Just that smelly old dog sitting up in the cab and imagining he’s a Christian,” she said, coming back in. “You see your uncle doesn’t go bringing it inside.”

  “Aw.”

  “All right. Your uncle can bring it around so you can say hello through the window, but no opening it, now. We don’t want a chill. The air outside’s quite brisk.

  “I’m off to the flower show at Hinuera. I never feel easy, leaving the house with your uncle here. When I think of that time I came home and saw smoke rising from the backyard…Making gunpowder, indeed. Upsetting the neighbours, and putting the chooks off laying. There’s Mrs Burns tooting. I must run.”

  “Imagine the cackle in that car,” said Uncle Trev. “Your mother, Mrs Burns, and Mrs Dripnose all squawking together.”

  “Mrs Diprose.”

  “That’s what I said. None of them listening to the others. Shrieking, waving, and nodding their silly hats like a carful of turkeys shaking their wattles and going ‘Gobble, gobble, gobble.’ ”

  I grinned, so Uncle Trev gobbled again and said, “Your mother made me swear I wouldn’t bring Old Tip through the door.”

  “She said I could say hello through the window.”

  “Well, say it.”

  I looked through the window and there was Old Tip. “Hello,” I said and waved, and Old Tip bounced and barked.

  “That’s all right then. You’ve done what she told you to do.” Uncle Trev opened the window, and Old Tip leapt through, snuffled and licked my nose, and would have climbed on my bed, but Uncle Trev told him to sit. I hung my hand down where it could scratch behind his ears. Old Tip liked that.

  Uncle Trev went out to the kitchen, and I heard him going through Mum’s cake and biscuit tins. “We’ll stuff ourselves on your mother’s Louise cake for our lunch,” he called. “And her gingernuts, too.”

  “Mum said there’s something for lunch in the safe.”

  “We’ll give that to Old Tip. He won’t know the difference.”

  Old Tip looked at me.

  “Don’t go listening to him,” Uncle Trev yelled. “He’s always trying to make people feel sorry for him.” He came back munching a gingernut, and gave me one.

  “I don’t suppose you heard that the barbarians sacked Auckland last week?”

  “What are barbarians?”

  “Uncivilised savages. Years ago, they sacked Rome and started the Dark Ages. Now they’re attacking New Zealand.”

  “Why didn’t Mum tell me?”

  “Women are like that: they like to spoil any fun that’s going. Yes, the barbarians sacked Hamilton last week, then Morrinsville. Yesterday, they had a go at Walton.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Held up the post office and stole all the stamps. Pinched all the lollies and sweet biscuits from Hilliers’ store. Rampaged up and down the main street, yahooing and terrifying everyone, and disappeared back into the countryside.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “Gotta Henry thinks they’re Australians. My theory is that they’re working their way south. You think of it: Auckland, Hamilton, Morrinsville, and yesterday in Walton. Today it’ll be Waharoa’s turn.”

  “I’d like to be attacked!” I said. “Better than just lying in bed with nothing to do.”

  “It’d certainly liven up the place. Old Gotta and I thought of joining the barbarians, if they’d have us. There’s been nothing much happen in Waharoa since your mother got the Governor-General drunk with her tipsy cake.”

  “Mum says that’s a wicked lie.”

  “She would.” Uncle Trev nodded, went out to the kitchen, and brought back the tin of gingernuts. “Make the most of them while you can. If those Aussie barbarians scent gingernuts, they’ll scoff the lot of them.”

  “Do you think they’ll attack Waharoa today?”

  “It’s the next town on their way south, isn’t it?”

  Mum had left some cold meat and salad in the safe, and we had some for lunch. Old Tip wasn’t very interested in the salad, except for the thick mayonnaise that Mum made with condensed milk. He licked it up, and gobbled the meat I gave him.

  Uncle Trev gave me a hand to put on my dressing gown and slippers, and piggy-backed me down the path to the dunny. By the time I got back to bed, I felt a bit tired and closed my eyes.

  When I woke, Uncle Trev was reading the Herald.

  “Have the barbarians been?” I asked.

  “Haven’t heard them.” Uncle Trev shook the Herald and said, “The Auckland paper doesn’t say anything, because they’re scared the barbarians will go back and give them another hiding. I believe they made a mess of the school at Walton, wrote rude remarks on the blackboard, just the sort of thing you’d expect from them uncivilised Australians.”

  “Did they hurt the kids?”

  “Not that I heard of. Barbarians are usually kind to children. Well, they’re just overgrown kids themselves. The paper says the police are investigating, whatever that means. It doesn’t look too good for Waharoa today.”

  “What if Mum runs into them?”

  “No barbarian in his right mind would attack that carful of women. He’d get his comeuppance if he did.”

  I was drifting off to sleep again when Uncle Trev said, “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “Listen!”

  A cow mooed in the distance, up the back of Hawes’ farm. I shook my head.

  “I’ll just have a look. Don’t you move. If you hear them coming, pull the blanket over your head. Old Tip won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Uncle Trev ran down the path past the kitchen window, and the front gate clicked. Old Tip’s ears lifted, and he whined.

  “I’ll look after you,” I told him, and that was when I heard the barbarians coming. At first it was drums beating in the distance. They got louder and louder, like a brass band coming up the street. There were shouts, booms, and a rolling, rumbling noise with screams and bangs. The barbarians must have been very angry, so I remembered what Uncle Trev said, and pulled the blanket over my head.

  “If you’re scared, there’s room under the blanket,” I told Old Tip, but he didn’t seem that worried. I peeped and saw his ears prick up, that was all. He even had a bit of a grin on his face.

  Then they were past our place, disappearing down Ward Street, and one or two shouts floated back. A boom followed by silence, and the cow mooed again.

  “The barbarians have gone down to sack the post office,” I told Old Tip. “They’ll be pinching the stamps.”

  When Uncle Trev came back, he took off his coat and shook it out the window, and I saw red dust drift and sparkle in the sunlight.

  “That was a close thing,” he said. “I got under my lorry, so they didn’t see me. They were shouting something about attacking the post office.”

  “Will they come back here?”

  “They’ve gone.” Uncle Trev shook his head. “They were Australians, like I said.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “Once you’ve heard that Aussie voice, you’d never mistake it for anything else. They’ll head south, sacking Matamata and Tirau on their way to Wellington. Then they’ll make the ferry take them across Cook Strait without paying, and loot the South Island.”

  “I hope Mum doesn’t meet them.”

  “They’re probably hoping they don’t meet her. They’re cowards, barbarians. All noise.

  “Out you go,” Uncle Trev said to Old Tip, who jumped out the window. “Now you can swear to your mother he didn’t come in the door. Hooray.”

  Mum came in sniffing, looked at her cake and biscuit tins, washed our dishes, and said she’d had a lovely day at the flower show. She’d brought home a treat for me, a slice of the bacon-and-egg pie they’d had for lunch.

  She slipped over to Mrs Kemp’s
next door with an azalea cutting she’d picked up for her, and came back rampaging. I could tell by her footsteps.

  “Mrs Kemp told me all about what’s been going on. Your uncle and that disreputable friend of his, that Mr Henry, and Mrs Burns’ husband who should know a sight better, rolling a corrugated iron water tank along Ward Street, the three them inside it, banging it with lumps of wood, shouting and groaning, making a terrible noise.”

  “It was a tribe of barbarians from Australia, Mum. You could tell by their voices. They sacked Walton yesterday and Morrinsville the day before. And Hamilton and Auckland.”

  “Barbarians? I might have known something would happen the moment my back was turned. I suppose that man brought his dog in through the back door as soon as I was gone?”

  “No, he didn’t, Mum. True.”

  “I’m sure I can smell that old dog. Did you speak to him through the window, as I told you?”

  “Through the window,” I told Mum. Under the blankets, I crossed my fingers and kept very still. That wasn’t telling a fib. Not a bad one anyway.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Why Old Furry Didn’t Have a Hot Water Bottle

  “Great weather for Old Furry.” A drip hung off Uncle Trev’s nose, and when I told him he wiped it with the back of one hand and rubbed it on his trousers.

  “When I do that, Mum says, ‘Haven’t you got a hanky?’ ”

  Uncle Trev blew on his fingers. “She can get a bit funny about things like that. Do you know I couldn’t hear the engine for the frost crunching under my tyres? Great weather for Old Furry,” he said again.

  “Did you bring Old Tip?”

  “I left him home, keeping an eye on Old Furry.”

  “Who’s Old Furry?”

  “You know Old Furry.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve made him for years.”

  “Made him?”

  “You might have things a bit round the wrong way,” said Uncle Trev. “What do you think Old Furry is?”

  “A new bull?”

  “I said Old Furry, not Old Fury. Why would I go buying an old bull? Old Satan’s enough trouble already, the old sinner, and there’s Young Hubert coming on. You should have seen Old Satan this morning, shivering and wiping his nose on the back of his hand, and stamping up and down under the shelter belt, trying to get warm.”

  “What about Old Toot? Did you put a cover on him?”

  “He’s been wearing it all this week. He’s very proud of his cover, Old Toot, specially since I painted his name on it, though he still complained about the cold this morning.”

  “Why did you paint his name on his cover?”

  “He was scared Old Tip might pinch it.”

  “It’d be too big for Old Tip.”

  “That’s what I said, but Old Toot moaned till I got the Stockholm tar and painted his name both sides. Now he spends most of his time down by the road fence. People going past in buggies wave and call his name, and he nods back, very dignified. Cars give him a toot, and he trots around the paddock with his head and tail up. He’s quite vain for a horse.”

  “What about Old Satan, why hasn’t he got a cover?”

  “I made him one out of heavy canvas hemmed around the edges, the way your mother finishes off her oven cloth.”

  “Blanket stitch?”

  “That’s it. Then I embroidered his name in capital letters on one side with red wool. I thought he’d like that, but I’d forgotten Old Satan can’t read. I tried to teach him, but he said he couldn’t be bothered learning. Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter to a bull. Not like a horse, who has to be able to read signposts, or a dog like Old Tip who likes to read the Woman’s Weekly.

  “No, that ungrateful Old Satan, he shouldered the rubbing post in the middle of his paddock till the buckle under his neck came undone, then he tossed the cover over his head, ripped it with his horns, and bits of red wool floated everywhere. You know how your mother’s forever saying something’s like a red rag to a bull?”

  “Yes.”

  “Old Satan saw red. He pushed over a couple of chains of fence, tore a gap in the hawthorn hedge into the next paddock, and charged head-on into a big strainer post. Knocked himself silly. ‘After all the trouble I went to,’ I told him, ‘and look at your cover now. You can stand out in the frost and be cold for all I care,’ and I pulled the ruins of the cover off his head. But he didn’t take any notice; well, he was unconscious, of course.

  “That’s why he was stamping up and down this morning, rubbing his hands and bellowing about how cold it was. ‘You had a cover,’ I told him, ‘and look what you did to it.’ And, would you believe it, he swore black and blue he’d never had a cover. He’s not just a bad-tempered old brute: he’s a born liar. Well, look who he’s named after.”

  “Have you thought of giving him a hot water bottle?”

  Uncle Trev looked at me. “If the other farmers found I’d given my bull a hot water bottle, I’d be the laughing stock of the district. Besides, he’d just stick a horn through it and then complain because all the hot water ran out. Bulls aren’t the most grateful of animals, you know.”

  “Old Tip likes a hottie,” I said.

  “A dog’s different.”

  “You told me last winter when I was at school that he pinched yours.”

  “That’s right, I kept waking with cold feet and thinking I’d kicked my hottie out of bed. Then I woke once, and that Old Tip had his head under the blankets. He shoved my feet out of the way, got his teeth into the hole at the bottom of the hot water bottle, the one you hang it up by, and – flop – dragged it on to the floor. I didn’t let on I was awake, but heard him grunt to himself as he curled up and snored away warm while my feet froze.

  “I gave him a good telling off, but it made not the slightest difference. In the end, I bought him his own hot water bottle and wrote his name on it. Then Old Toot found out, and nothing would do but I must buy him a hot water bottle and write his name on it, too. They’re like a pair of squabbling children. Who ever heard of a horse with a hot water bottle?”

  “That’s what Mum said.”

  “You want to be careful what you tell your mother.”

  “If Old Toot’s got a hottie, why was he cold this morning?”

  “He forgot to fill it last night before he went to bed. ‘Serves you right,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it enough that I’ve bought you a hot water bottle? Do you expect me to fill it for you as well?’ ”

  “Does Old Tip fill his own hottie?”

  “Catch him forgetting. And, while he’s about it, he fills mine and puts it in my bed. He can be quite thoughtful, for a dog, Old Tip, but he’s usually got an ulterior motive.”

  “What’s an ulterior motive?”

  “He only does it because he wants something.”

  “What about Old Furry?” I asked.

  “What about Old Furry?”

  “Does he have a hot water bottle?”

  Uncle Trev shook his head.

  “What about a cover?”

  He shook his head again.

  “How does he keep warm?”

  “Sits on the stove.”

  “Sits on the stove?”

  “What rubbish are you filling the child’s head with now?”

  At Mum’s voice, Uncle Trev yelped and jumped to his feet, pulled off his hat which he shouldn’t have been wearing inside, and said he had to get home to milk.

  “Milking,” Mum laughed when he’d gone. “He dried off the last of his herd weeks ago.”

  “He was telling me about the frosts, and how he gave Old Tip and Old Toot a hot water bottle, and Old Satan wanted one too, but Uncle Trev said, ‘Who ever heard of a bull having a hottie?’ ”

  “Why encourage the man? He only comes up with that rubbish because you listen to it.”


  “And there’s somebody else on the farm now,” I told Mum, “and he doesn’t have a hot water bottle: he sits on the stove to keep warm, so he can’t be as big as Old Toot or Old Satan.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Yes, he’s called Old Furry.”

  Mum stared at me and shook her head. “How on earth I managed to give birth to a child with addled brains, I’ll never understand. Old Furry’s not an animal.”

  “What is he then?”

  “It’s the silly name your uncle gives to that thick soup he makes with bacon bones and split peas. I’ll give him Old Furry next time he comes in.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Uncle Trev’s Secret Recipe for Old Furry

  “Old Furry’s just soup,” I said, next time Uncle Trev came in.

  “Old Furry’s not just soup: it’s a way of life.”

  “How do you make it?”

  “That’s best kept secret.”

  “You can tell me.”

  “Your mother would torture it out of you.”

  “Mum says it’s ordinary old split pea soup with a few bacon bones.”

  Uncle Trev looked cunning. “Then why is she forever begging for the recipe?”

  “Why don’t you give it to her?”

  “And have her hand it around the Women’s Institute?” Uncle Trev shook his head. “And she’d probably change its name. I tried calling it Old Fury for a while, but it wasn’t happy with that, then I started calling it Old Furry, and it tasted much better. Old Furry’s fame has spread as far abroad as Te Poi and Tirau.”

  “Heck.”

  “A man’d be a fool to give away the recipe. Besides, keeping it a secret annoys your mother.

  “It all began when me and Old Gotta came back from the Great War. We were baching in a couple of whares we threw up to live in while we gave each other a hand to clearfell the blocks of bush the government gave returned soldiers for farms. We tried to join the Waharoa Women’s Institute so we could learn how to bake a decent date scone, and how to knit ourselves a jersey for winter. But do you think those women would let us join?”