Aunt Effie and Mrs Grizzle Read online

  “‘I’m telling you.’

  “‘We can’t afford to pay you,’ my mother laughed her annoying little silvery laugh.

  “‘Witches always pay the people they work for!’ Mrs Grizzle flung a handful of gold dollars into her lap.”

  Ann popped her hand over Jessie’s mouth.

  “MY MOTHER gasped at such wealth. ‘Where did you get them?’

  “‘Some I made. Some I stole from the usurious bank in Matamata.’

  “‘A forger and bank robber!’ My mother tried to fall asleep.

  “‘I wouldn’t try that,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘Remember the gunpowder I put in the corners of your eyes to cure your sleeping sickness. Close your eyes – just as much as one blink – and it will go off and blow them out of your head!’”

  The little ones looked at each other and propped their eyes wide open with their fingers, so they didn’t blow out of their heads.

  “MY MOTHER opened her eyes very wide, and Mrs Grizzle pulled a dark-green bottle out of her swag. ‘Have a swig.’

  “‘Glug-glug! Mmm … It’s nice!’ my mother laughed.

  “‘That’s enough.’

  “‘Just another little sip?’ asked my mother. She smiled so the dimple in her cheek showed. ‘Just one teeny-weeny little sip?’

  “‘You’ve had quite enough for one day. What was the School Inspector doing here?’

  “‘He’s going to nail red-hot horseshoes on my feet and make me go to school,’ I said.

  “‘Haven’t you been to school, Brunnhilde?’

  I shook my head.

  “‘Then you’re on Correspondence?’

  “‘We only collect our mail once a year, when we go into Hopuruahine.’ I glanced down and whispered, so my mother couldn’t hear, ‘I always burn any letters that look as if they’re from the government.’

  “‘Someone’s got to go to school,’ said Mrs Grizzle, ‘or that School Inspector’s going to keep coming back. He gets paid for all the children he catches. I’m going to have to do something about him.’

  “Keeping her eyes wide-open made my mother look very young. She looked smaller as well. ‘I’d like to go to school!’ she said in a winning voice.

  “‘You would!’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘I’ll have a think about it.’

  “My mother cooked tea, while Mrs Grizzle and I went down to the shed. We found the cows had milked themselves, the pigs had done the separating and fed themselves on the skimmed milk, and Bonny had harnessed herself into the konaki and sledged the can of cream to the gate.

  “‘Good cows!’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘Clever pigs! Intelligent horse, Bonny!’ They mooed, grunted, and neighed back.

  “‘That’s how a well-run farm should work,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘When I first came to the Waikato, the farmers spent half their time putting shells on the eggs. I taught the chooks to lay them in shells. Some day, I’ll teach the cows to give butter instead of milk.’

  “‘It would save a lot of work,’ I agreed.

  “Mrs Grizzle nodded. ‘First, we’ve got to do something about that School Inspector. You must have an education, Brunnhilde!’

  “‘Couldn’t you teach me?’

  “‘I told you,’ said Mrs Grizzle as we kicked off our gumboots and went inside, ‘witches can do anything. But the School Inspector’s like an elephant. He never forgets. Somebody’s got to go to school.’

  “It made a change, not having to cook tea after milking. My mother had it ready, had put on a clean pinny, and done her hair. She looked younger and smaller than ever. ‘Would one of you like to bring me in a bucket of coal?’ she asked in her sweetest little voice. ‘It’s far too heavy for little me.…’ She sucked in her dimple, simpered, and made herself look even smaller.

  “While we brought in the coal, she tried to serve our tea, but the stove was now too high for her to reach, so we served ourselves. Then we had to put a cushion on her chair and lift her up on to it before she could reach her plate.

  “By the time we finished eating, she was having trouble with her big knife and fork. She had to stand on a stool to do the dishes, and I put the plates away because she couldn’t reach the cupboard.

  “‘That’s enough!’ Mrs Grizzle gave my mother another sip, from a dark-blue bottle.

  “‘More!’ My mother clapped her hands prettily.

  “‘Time we were all in bed,’ said Mrs Grizzle gruffly. She corked the bottle and hid it in her swag. ‘We’re riding into Hopuruahine first thing.’

  “‘The School Inspector will catch me!’ I cried.

  “‘You’ll find things have changed.’ Mrs Grizzle brushed her red hair with the hearth broom, so vigorously that sparks flew up the chimney.

  “‘How’s my mother going to sleep if she can’t close her eyes?’

  “‘She can close them now. The gunpowder’s gone, her sleeping sickness is cured, and she’ll wake a different person tomorrow.’

  “I piggybacked my mother up to bed. As I sang ‘Rock-a-bye Baby on the Treetop’, she fell asleep. I tucked her in, kissed her goodnight, and tiptoed out with the candle.

  “First thing in the morning, Mrs Grizzle whistled the pack-horses. I went upstairs to wake my mother and found a dear little girl with long golden ringlets in her bed.

  “‘Where’s my mother?’

  “‘I’m your mummy,’ said the little girl. ‘My name is Euphemia, and I’m starting school today!’”

  Aunt Effie lay back on her pillows, and we all sighed.

  “Tell us some more?” asked Casey.

  “How could she be your mummy if you were her daughter?” asked Jessie

  “How come her name was Eu – what it was?” asked Jared.

  “We don’t know anything about mummies,” said Lizzie. “When your dear little mummy grew smaller, did you grow bigger?”

  But Aunt Effie didn’t answer. She emptied her bottle of Old Puckeroo, rolled over, and slept.

  “Let’s play with the treasure and count the gold dollars!” said Jessie, but the dogs growled, and something under Aunt Effie’s enormous bed moved and went, “Booo-booo!”

  “Ahhh!” We leapt off and ran several steps in the air before hitting the floor. Caligula, Nero, Brutus, Kaiser, Genghis, and Boris just slipped off. Nothing scared them.

  Downstairs, they trotted outside. Aunt Effie had trained them to use a latrine up the back of the orchard, a trench they dug and filled with dirt.

  “You can’t have six enormous pig dogs pooping all over the place,” she always said. It was the same when we were sailing our scow, the Margery Daw. She made the dogs hang on to a rope with their teeth and poop and piddle over the stern. When she wasn’t watching, we used to copy them.

  “Life on a ship would be intolerable,” Aunt Effie used to say, “if you didn’t have a bit of discipline.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  How Jared Blew Up, Why Aunt Effie Fired Her Cannon, How My Little Mother Grew Down as I Grew Up, and Why the School Inspector Lassoed Euphemia and Shouted, “Gotcha!”

  We didn’t want to wake Aunt Effie by making a noise under her window, so played a quiet game of hopscotch. But the little ones said the big ones wouldn’t let them have a turn. Then we played marbles, but Daisy said Alwyn was cheating.

  “I were not!”

  “Your bad grammar shows your guilt!”

  “I was not!”

  “You were so.”

  “So were you!” said Alwyn so Daisy coughed.

  “Shhh! We’ll play kingaseeny.” Marie glanced up at the window. “Daisy can go ‘he’ and we’ll see who’s right.”

  Straight off, Daisy caught Alwyn and held him down while she smacked him three times on the head – hard. “Kingaseeny, kingaseeny, one, two three!” she chanted. “So there!”

  “You’re supposed to pat, not wallop!” Alwyn rubbed his head.

  “The Maori kids at school don’t like kingaseeny,” said Jessie. “They don’t like being patted on the head.”

  “It’s rude
to touch Maoris’ heads,” Marie told us.

  “But we’re Maori,” said Jessie.

  “Only a bit,” Alwyn told her. “You’re mostly Scowegian!”

  “What about me?” asked Lizzie, as Jessie bawled noisily.

  “You’re Eskimo.”

  “I’m not Eskimo. I’m a Polar Bear!”

  “You’re a Red Indian!”

  “I’m a Redskin!”

  “No, me!”

  “What am I?” “What am I?” “What am I?”

  “We’ve all got a bit of Scotch and a bit of Maori and a bit of Irish and a bit of Pom,” said Marie. “And a bit of Chinese. Aunt Effie said so. ‘And heaven knows what else!’ Remember, she said we’re a bunch of mongrels?”

  “Which one am I?”

  “I’m a Chink!”

  “You’re not allowed to say Chink. You’ve got to say Chinaman. Mr Jones said.”

  Alwyn sang with gestures:

  “Chink! Chink! Chinaman! Feeling velly bad.

  Chop! Chop! Head off! Velly, velly sad.”

  “Oooh! I’m going to tell Mr Jones! He said we’re not allowed to sing that song,” Daisy told him. “How would you like it if you were Joe Nugget, and somebody sang it?”

  “Joe taught it to me!” said Alwyn who sat with Joe Nugget.

  Over the shouting, Marie said, “We’re all a mixture.”

  “You make us sound like a chocolate assortment,” said Daisy. She went and sat on the steps on her own.

  “I’m a strawberry chocolate!” said Lizzie.

  “I’m a boiled lolly!” yelled Jessie.”

  “Look at me!” Casey screamed. “I’m a liquorice all-sort!”

  And Jared bellowed, “I’m a bull’s eye!”

  We got noisier. We played Cowboys and Indians, and we played Cops and Robbers, and punched each other, but Ann punched Jazz back a beaut and said, “That’ll teach you!”

  Then we got the little ones on our shoulders for cockfighting. Jessie fell off Alwyn and cried, Lizzie fell off Jazz and cried, and Jared fell off Isaac and got winded.

  “His face is going blue!” said Alwyn.

  “Is he dying?

  “It looks like it.”

  “Jared’s dying! Alwyn said so!” The little ones cried noisily.

  We all shouted and yelled and pushed each other. “It’s your fault!”

  “It’s yours!”

  “You done it!”

  Peter shoved us aside, sat Jared up, and bent him in the middle. He sucked in air and made a harsh noise like a cockerel learning to crow.

  “You’ve spoiled it,” Alwyn told Peter. “All the blue’s gone.” As we shouted and struggled to see Jared’s blue face turn white again, there was a huge boom.

  “Jared’s blown up!” shouted Alwyn. There was a terrible silence.

  Bits of burning wad drifted down on our heads. Aunt Effie had got sick of our noise and fired the cannon she kept in her bedroom.

  “Come away from under her window,” Marie hissed.

  “It was just a blank charge,” said Daisy. “I’m sure Aunt Effie would never fire a real shot at us.”

  “Do you call that a blank?” asked Jazz. Down in the bull paddock, one of our footy posts snapped and fell over. The cannon-ball ricocheted towards the bluegums. The bulls galloped with their tails up.

  “Daisy-Mabel-Johnny-Flossie-Lynda-Stan-Howard-Marge-Stuart-Peter-Marie-Colleen-Alwyn-Bryce-Jack-Ann-Jazz-Beck-Jane-Isaac-David-Victor-Casey-Lizzie-Jared-Jessie!”

  We tore inside and up the stairs into the lovely reek of gunpowder smoke.

  “Do you want to hear some more of this story or not? Well, if you do, you’d better make me a cup of tea. And I’d like a pikelet with strawberry jam. And don’t be mean with the condensed milk!”

  We made the tea and pikelets, and we weren’t mean with the condensed milk. We’d just got ourselves comfortable on the foot of her enormous bed when the dogs bounded up, shoved us aside, took back their pillows and pulled the eiderdown off our feet.

  “Now where was I?”

  “The little girl with golden ringlets in your mother’s bed, she said, ‘My name is …’” Lizzie’s voice petered out.

  “She was going to start school that morning,” said Jessie. “Can we have a look at the treasure while we listen?”

  Aunt Effie snarled at Jessie, and went on with her story.

  “I RAN DOWNSTAIRS. Mrs Grizzle was stirring a spoonful of gunpowder into her tea. She said, ‘It doesn’t taste the same without it.’

  “‘There’s a little girl in my mother’s bed! She says her name’s Euphemia and she’s starting school today.’

  “Mrs Grizzle tipped her tea into her saucer. She blew on it and sucked it up: ‘Slurrrp! The gunpowder makes all the difference!’

  “‘Where’s my mother?’ I asked.

  “‘Last night,’ said Mrs Grizzle, ‘while you were growing up, your mother was growing down.’

  “I glanced at my feet – and felt dizzy. My old dungarees that I always wore for milking split with a crack! Mrs Grizzle tossed me some clothes. The trousers had gold stripes down the side. The jacket had medals.

  “‘This is my father’s uniform,’ I said. ‘I recognise his medals.’

  “‘He doesn’t need them where he is,’ Mrs Grizzle laughed. ‘Dress yourself, and then you can get your mother up.’

  “The little girl who called herself Euphemia lay singing ‘Hickory-dickory-dock’, to my old teddy bear. She sat up and said, ‘Finish the song you were singing me last night. About a rock-a-bye baby.’

  “‘There isn’t time. Not if we’re going to get you to school by nine o’clock.’

  “Over the back of little Euphemia’s chair was a freshly-pressed navy-blue gym frock with a sash, black stockings, a white blouse, black bloomers with elastic in the legs, a school tie, and a Panama hat with a band which said ‘Who Does His’ on the front, and ‘Best Does Well!’ on the back.

  “My little mother put on her gym first. I had to take it off again to put on her bloomers, singlet, and blouse. As she lifted her arms for me to pull the gym over her head, I saw my hands were twice as big as hers.

  “‘There,’ I told her, ‘you look like a real, big, grown-up schoolgirl!’

  “Euphemia stood in front of the mirror and put on her Panama with ‘Who Does His Best Does Well!’ around the band. She looked at herself with the hat on, and she looked at herself with the hat off. I had to brush her golden ringlets again so they hung evenly. Her big blue eyes smiled adoringly into themselves.

  “‘You can blink your eyes. Mrs Grizzle says the gunpowder’s gone.’

  “‘Who’s Mrs Grizzle?’

  “‘Hurry up!’ a gruff voice roared downstairs.

  “Euphemia was scared but exceptionally vain. She pinched her cheeks, bit her lips to make them red, and swung down the banisters, one step at a time, her finger in her mouth. She pointed her foot and drew a circle with the toe of one new button shoe.

  “‘You look like a real, big, grown-up schoolgirl!’ said Mrs Grizzle.

  “Euphemia smiled, climbed into her high chair, and waved a spoonful of porridge. ‘Yummy!’ she said. ‘Through the teeth and past the gums … Look out stomach, here it comes!’”

  “‘Do you want me to feed you?’ I asked.

  “‘I’m a big girl. I can feed myself.’

  “‘Still, you don’t want to drop porridge on your new gym.’ I tucked a tea-towel around her neck.

  “Down at the shed, the cows had milked themselves, the pigs had had done the separating and fed the skim dick to themselves, and Bonny had sledged the cream down to the gate.

  “Euphemia put her school bag over her shoulder. I put her Panama on her head, and she took it off, put it on again, and arranged her golden ringlets in the mirror. We sailed across the Great Waharoa Swamp, mounted, and Mrs Grizzle led the pack-horses.

  “As we rode past Mr Weeks’s bush, the School Inspector galloped from behind the sawdust heap, lassoed Euphemia,
threw her over his saddle, and galloped towards the Hopuruahine school. “Gotcha!” he shouted. “Gotcha!”

  “Dear little thing!” Daisy cried. “I’d like to be lassoed by the School Inspector.”

  Aunt Effie looked at Daisy, nodded to herself, and went on with the story.

  “MY LITTLE MOTHER’S Panama hat blew behind on its elastic band. She was already too far away for me to read ‘Who Does His Best Does Well!’

  “‘Be brave, Brunnhilde,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘She’s going to love school.’

  “But I couldn’t help having a little cry. ‘She is my mother,’ I wept, ‘even if she does call herself Euphemia….’”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Locked in the Dark Spidery Dunny, the Indian Deathlock and the Octopus Clamp, Kraw-Poocka-Kacko, the Anvil and the Cannon, Whack-a Pukeko, and a Tiny Forlorn Cry.

  Lizzie started to repeat Aunt Effie’s last word “Euph–”; Jessie hung upside down and had a quick look for the treasure; and Casey and Jared giggled. Aunt Effie whipped out her false teeth, gave each of them a sharp nip, and popped her teeth back in. The little ones sat up straight with their hands on their heads, and Aunt Effie continued her story.

  “MRS GRIZZLE AND I picked up the groceries and the bundles of papers from Mr Bryce’s general store, and the mailbags from the post office. We took the horses to the blacksmith’s. Mr Whimble bent over a hoof and tried on a shoe. Mrs Grizzle held the horse’s head. They didn’t see me tiptoe away and run to the school.

  “I peeped in the window and saw they had put my mother in primer one. She sat with her hands on her head – a smile all over her face. The teacher gave her a slate, a wet rag, and a slate pencil. ‘Copy the letters off the blackboard, and don’t dare squeak the pencil!’

  “I could see A, B, and C, and a row of squiggles that must have been the rest of the alphabet. I was trying to work out which ones spelled Brunnhilde, when my mother’s slate pencil squeaked.