Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull Read online

  “I’d like that!” I said. “How tall is the lighthouse?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” said Uncle Trev. “Nobody ever measured it, because there wasn’t a tape measure long enough. And just last week, in the Auckland Herald, there was a letter to the editor from the lighthouse keeper saying he’d tried to count all the steps to the top of the staircase. He got up to two thousand, went giddy and lost count. Yet a few months ago, he counted the steps and there were only fifteen hundred. He reckons the kauri lighthouse has taken root there on Rangitoto and started growing again.

  “Just to make matters worse, he said when he got to the top of the steps he dropped his box of matches. By the time he’d climbed all the way down for them, and climbed all the way up again, the sun was shining and there was no point in lighting the candle.” Uncle Trev tapped the side of his nose, winked, and was gone.

  “When I go back to school, I’ll give them a morning talk about the Rangitoto lighthouse,” I said aloud to myself. “And I’ll tell Mum about it when she comes home.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gotta Henry and His Flying Balaclava

  Uncle Trev bent and picked something off the floor by my bed.

  “These women and their hatpins,” he grumbled.

  “Mum said there’s a wind today, so she stuck them in to hold her hat on.”

  “Out on the farm, the wind’s coming down off the Kaimais like nobody’s business,” said Uncle Trev. “It blows up Old Toot’s bum, and he sticks his tail in the air and gallops round his paddock.” Uncle Trev snorted and galloped round my bedroom, tossing his head, sticking his tail in the air. Outside, Old Tip barked.

  “It hurts when I laugh.”

  “Lying in bed all day, your lungs need the exercise.”

  “Are you going to let Old Tip in?”

  “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “Mum’ll be ages. She wore her hat with all the feathers.”

  Uncle Trev nodded and opened the window, and Old Tip sailed through, sniffed and licked me, barked, and lay by my bed all at once.

  “You be ready to jump out the window the moment you hear the gate click,” Uncle Trev told him, and Old Tip thumped the floor with his tail. “I’ve warned her about wearing that hat on windy days.”

  “Mum says feathers are all the fashion.”

  “A wind like this, it’s got more power than your mother realises. There are times when it’s better to lose your hat than your head.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those hatpins mean the hat won’t come off her head. Fashion’s all very well, but a feather’s made to fly. I remember the time the younger Kelly girl was getting married, and your mother complained: ‘I’ve been wearing my old hat to every wedding in the district since the year dot, but I can’t afford a new one.’

  “‘My old hat does me,’ I told her,’ said Uncle Trev.

  “‘As if anyone notices what hat you wear,’ your mother said.” Uncle Trev sighed. “Next time Old Gotta came over to borrow something, I told him about your mother’s problem.

  “‘I’ll make her a new hat,’ he said.”

  Old Tip whined and stared at Uncle Trev. He always enjoyed a story. Uncle Trev looked at him and nodded.

  “I saw nothing of Old Gotta for a few days, then I was letting the last cow out of the bail one morning, and this apparition came skimming and shrieking across the paddock towards the shed. Old Blossom took one look, rolled her eyes, and skittered and squittered up the race.

  “That Gotta, he’d cut the brim off his old felt hat and stuck it round with feathers off his chooks, a wheel of them. Pheasant tail feathers hung down the back, and the top of the hat was all white plumes: the tail off the big old white Leghorn rooster me and Old Gotta had eaten the week before. You know that photo of the Governor-General in the Weekly News, the one where he’s wearing all those feathers for the opening of Parliament?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s what you call a plumed helmet,” said Uncle Trev. “If he’s a Governor-General with enough hair, he keeps it on with hatpins. I read about it in the Woman’s Weekly. If he’s a bald Governor-General, he has to glue his plumed helmet on to his skull or he couldn’t keep it on, not in Wellington.

  “Old Gotta’s plumes were twice the size of the Governor-General’s, and he was sailing across the paddock towards my shed with the wind behind him, his feet dragging along the ground, and shrieking, ‘Stop me, Trev.’ ”

  “What happened?”

  “The old fool, he’d sharpened the wooden skewers out of a roast of beef and stuck them through his feathered contraption for hatpins. He was already half-bald, so the skewers didn’t have much hair to get a hold of, but just as he looked like smacking into my cowshed, his colossal plumed hat came off and sailed into the bull paddock.

  “Old Satan poked a horn through it, and the wind spun it round and round like a propeller and lifted him off the ground. I reckon he flew a good furlong before he came down. He was a very quiet bull for the next couple of weeks.”

  “What about the hat?”

  “The wind pinned it still spinning against the fence. It pulled a strainer post out of the ground, and I lost several chains of barbed wire and battens before Old Gotta’s plumed hat disappeared, still spinning.

  “Next day, the New Zealand Herald had a drawing of something that whistled and spun through the sky over Auckland. ‘Like a giant dinner plate,’ the article said, but a housewife from out Mission Bay wrote to the editor that it looked more like a flying saucer, and the name caught on.

  “Old Gotta read the Herald and spluttered – he spits a bit when he gets excited because of his false teeth not fitting. ‘That wasn’t a flying saucer; it was my plumed hat. It just needs something to hold it on a bit better, and we’ve invented a new kind of aeroplane. You saw how it lifted Old Satan off his feet and pulled the post out of the ground. I tell you, Trev, we’re on to something.’

  “He’d completely forgotten he was making a new hat for your mother to wear to the Kelly girl’s wedding. Old Gotta’s like that: gets an idea into his head and nothing will drive it out but some other cockeyed idea. It’s how he gets into trouble again and again.”

  “What did Mr Henry do?”

  “He borrowed a horse cover, a sacking needle, and a length of string, and stitched himself what he called a flying balaclava. It came down over his face, with slits cut out of the canvas for his eyes, nose, and mouth, and a row of buttons up the back.

  “‘You stick feathers into that thing and go out in the wind,’ I told him, ‘you won’t come down again till the wind drops.’ But Old Gotta was too busy talking to listen to me.

  “‘It might be an idea if you anchor yourself to something solid so you can’t blow away,’ I said. ‘And it might be an idea to carry a pocket knife.’

  “Next morning, I’d just finished milking and was eating my porridge when I thought of something. I dropped my spoon so milk splashed all over the table, and ran. There wasn’t time to climb the fence, so I hurdled it. ‘Stop,’ I yelled, and came down on my face, half-winded.

  “Old Gotta had tied a length of plough-line around the big macrocarpa out the back of his house, and he was kneeling and tying the other end around his left foot as I hobbled up, still trying to get my breath.

  “‘Gotta pocket knife, Trev?’ I gave it to him and he stuck it in his pocket.

  “‘Stop!’ I tried to say, but it came out like a grunt. ‘I’ve just thought of something,’ I tried to puff, but Old Gotta was poking his head into his flying balaclava. He’d sewn on a great circle of turkey wing feathers so it was about the size of a cartwheel.

  “‘Don’t put it on,’ I gasped, but because the flying balaclava had no holes for his ears, he couldn’t hear.

  “‘Taihoa, Gotta,’ I yelled, but he was doing up the row of buttons up the b
ack of the balaclava. ‘Don’t stand up.’ He looked and saw my mouth wide open as I shrieked another word and grabbed for his legs.

  “‘What’d you say?’ Old Gotta asked, and stood straight up just as an immense blast of wind belted down off the Kaimais.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Why Mum Came Down Facing the Wrong Way

  “When Mr Henry put on his flying balaclava and stood up into the wind off the Kaimais, what did you shriek at him?”

  “Spin,” said Uncle Trev.

  “Spin?”

  “Spin. As I ate my porridge that morning, I remembered the way his other feathered hat spun like a propeller and lifted my old bull off the ground, the same way it spun as it pulled the strainer post out of the ground and flew away over Auckland. Only this time, the flying balaclava wasn’t going to come off Old Gotta’s head because it was buttoned on.”

  I thought, and said, “Gosh.”

  Uncle Trev nodded. “Old Gotta stood up and that contraption caught the immense blast of wind off the Kaimais. I went to grab for his legs, and yelled at him to cut himself free with my pocket knife, but he was already twenty feet in the air, spinning on the rope he’d tied from his left foot to the trunk of the big macrocarpa. The wind’s howling, Old Gotta’s shrieking, and the roots on that macrocarpa start cracking like rifle shots going off. Now, you won’t believe this –”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “That old macrocarpa twists in the ground, heaves, and lifts spinning into the air. I wouldn’t have thought a bit of old plough-line was strong enough. You can imagine what was happening to Old Gotta’s left foot.”

  Uncle Trev shook his head as Old Tip and I stared at him.

  “Old Gotta was a goner. Either that flying balaclava was going to twist off his head or the rope was going to pull off his foot. I closed my eyes and heard an almighty crack. ‘Poor Old Gotta’s been pulled in half,’ I says to Old Tip, and he put his hands over his eyes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I opened my eyes and saw all those big buttons up the back of Old Gotta’s flying balaclava had torn off. Lucky for him, he never could sew on a button properly. I told you once how he tried to join the Women’s Institute so he could learn.”

  I nodded.

  “At the same time the buttons came off, the rope broke and his turkey-feathered flying balaclava spun away in the direction of Auckland.”

  “What about Mr Henry?”

  “He was a good two hundred feet up in the air, shrieking as he dropped towards the drain behind his cowshed.”

  “Was he all right?”

  “You could say he had a soft landing.”

  “Soft?”

  “He came down in the drain full of green, stinking cow-muck.”

  “Phew.”

  “I cut a long tea-tree stick, dragged out Old Gotta, started the engine in the shed, turned on the pump, and hosed him down.”

  I grinned.

  Uncle Trev looked serious. “You know how your skin’s got little holes in it?”

  “I think they’re called pores.”

  “That’s it, pores. Old Gotta hit that drainful of green cow-muck from such a height, the colour was driven through the pores and deep under his skin. I kept the hose going on him for the better part of a couple of hours, but he was bright green all over.

  “He didn’t leave his farm for about three months, till the colour grew out. He’s pretty sensitive about his appearance, Old Gotta. It wasn’t just the colour either.”

  “What else?”

  “The stink of cow-muck was driven through the pores and into the skin, too. Old Tip and me, we’d only talk to him so long as he stood downwind of us.”

  “What about his flying balaclava?”

  “It spun over Queen Street, and those Aucklanders thought it was the Russians or the Germans attacking. Well, you know how goofy people get, living in town.”

  “What about Mum’s hat? Wasn’t that what gave Mr Henry the idea?”

  “I was just going to tell you about that. She trimmed her old hat with pukeko feathers, stuck it on with hatpins, and wore it to the Kelly girl’s wedding.

  “Now, there’s a funny thing happened,” said Uncle Trev. “Everyone had just got out of the church, and the bride was having her photo taken, when that wind off the Kaimais blew and they had trouble with her veil. But it was only a gust.”

  “That was lucky.”

  “You could say that,” said Uncle Trev, “but the bride’s mother was in tears. It was her mother’s wedding veil and it got a bit torn.

  “Your mother was standing beside me, and that gust spun her feathered hat and lifted her off the ground. The wind dropped and set her down on her feet again, but facing the wrong way.

  “She’s a great one for looking dignified, your mother. She turned herself round the right way and stared pretty sharp at me, but I glanced away smartly. And everybody else, they were busy looking at the bride; and the bridesmaids and the groom and the best man and the minister were all getting that veil under control. And there was the bride’s mother in tears.”

  “Mum could have blown away.”

  Uncle Trev nodded. “The cows needed milking, so I went straight home after the wedding breakfast, but I came into Waharoa a few days later, and your mother gave me a cup of tea and said her hat had been a great success.

  “‘Everyone thought it was brand new and the very height of fashion. I didn’t tell them,’ she said to me, ‘it’s just my old hat that I trimmed myself.’ ”

  Uncle Trev grinned. “I didn’t let on I’d seen her lift off the ground and come down facing the other way.”

  “What happened to the macrocarpa? The one Mr Henry pulled out with the plough-line?”

  “Now there’s a peculiar thing. I don’t suppose you’d see it happen again in a thousand years. When the flying balaclava came off Old Gotta’s head and the rope broke, the tree came down in its hole and went on growing as if nothing had happened. Pretty tough trees, macrocarpas.”

  There was a sound. Old Tip had run out his tongue and was showing all his teeth. I could tell he was laughing. There was another sound, a click. Uncle Trev looked at him, and Old Tip leapt out the window.

  “That’ll be the front gate,” Uncle Trev said. “Your mother can’t have blown away after all. You know, there’s just one thing I haven’t mentioned.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ever since the day the macrocarpa pulled out of the ground, Old Gotta walks with a bit of lean to one side. He puts it down to that rope stretching his left leg longer than the other.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” Uncle Trev said, and jumped out the window just as Mum came in the back door.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  How Gotta Henry Became Famous

  “When he heard the electricity was coming up our road,” said Uncle Trev, “Gotta Henry whipped into Matamata and bought himself a flash Columbia wireless set, varnished shiny brown, and with gold cloth stretched over the speaker. He stood it on a kerosene case in his kitchen, and knelt in front of it twiddling the bakelite knobs hour after hour.

  “‘You praying to that thing, Gotta?’ I asked him, ‘or sniffing the bakelite?’

  “He twiddled the knobs and cocked his head to one side. ‘I’m practising listening in,’ he told me, ‘for when the electricity comes up our road.’

  “Well, the power board rigged up their poles and wires, and we put away the candles, the kerosene lamps, and the Tilley lanterns. Old Gotta plugged in his wireless and he’d sit there – when he should have been milking his cows – with the back of the Columbia turned towards himself, switching it on and off so he could see the valves light up.

  “He tuned into 1zb and listened to Aunt Daisy every morning, and he was forever telling me her latest cooking recipe, and handy hints.”

&n
bsp; “Handy hints?”

  Uncle Trev nodded. “Like how to clean your water tank by chucking in a packet of Epsom Salts. Old Gotta was so impressed when he heard that one, he tipped a whole sugarbag of Epsom Salts into his tank and gave himself a bad case of the trots. He missed hearing Aunt Daisy the rest of the week because he daren’t come out of the dunny. I had to do his milking for him.

  “Then he got all excited, because Aunt Daisy had asked for anyone with handy hints to send them in to her at 1zb.

  “‘I’m going to tell her my hint for how to tan a haystack cover,’ he said.

  “I looked at him. ‘Why would you want to go doing that?’

  “Old Gotta hung his head, pointed his toe at the ground, and drew a circle. ‘It’d be all right hearing your own name come over the wireless,’ he whispered, blushing to the roots of his hair. ‘But it’s not just that.’

  “‘What is it then?’

  “‘It’s them sheilas, Trev, the ones who wouldn’t let us join their Women’s Institute. They’ll sneer on the other side of their faces when they hear Aunt Daisy say my name on her programme.’ And Old Gotta screwed his face up something terrible like he does when he thinks he’s grinning.”

  “Did he send in his hint?”

  Uncle Trev shook his head. “I told him the womenfolk wouldn’t be interested in tanning a haystack cover, so he came up with something else.”

  “What?”

  “Old Gotta invented a way to make linoleum. He lay a worn-out old bit of carpet face down and poured on half a gallon of green paint left over from the time I got house-proud and painted my front steps. It didn’t look much like lino to me, so I brought him into Waharoa to have a look at the pattern on your mother’s lino.

  “We didn’t even have time to sit down before she sent the pair of us packing for not taking off our hats inside her house, but he’d got a squiz at her lino. He borrowed the rest of my old tins of paint, and daubed red, white and blue circles, lines and triangles on the back of his carpet, laid it on the floor of his kitchen, and reckoned it looked a dead ringer for real lino just like your mother’s.