sweets: she threw me one and missed and it went under the bed, but I chose to believe she had not thrown it, and had treated me badly, and wept and wept until a nurse came to comfort me. I knew perfectly well it was an accident but preferred to be miserable, for the sheer drama of it. Later in life I would treat lovers and husbands in this way. Taking offence and suffering because of it, knowing in your heart they are not in the least to blame, you just want a drama, and your turn at being a victim.
One day unannounced, it was not my mother sitting the other side of the glass screen when I was led in for the family visit, but my father. At least that was what the nurse said he was, and I had no reason to mistrust the nurse. I didn’t know what to say to him. He seemed tall and handsome and I was immensely flattered that he had come to see me, and to think that I was his daughter, which gave me some kind of right to him. He talked about his plans: they did not seem to include living in the same house as us. That was fair enough, I could see he would hate the magpie. He gave me two shillings, and then he disappeared again.
When I came out of hospital my mother said my father had gone to the North Island to look for a job. North! The island I had never seen. That was where the excitement and energy lay, I was convinced. It was the land which contained my father, where the weather got warmer with every mile you travelled, where I had never been. Further south and all was bleak and next stop the South Pole, where there was nothing but penguins. I was increasingly awed by the map. How vast the globe was, and how proud I was to be British: why, a whole third of the nations were coloured red, which meant we governed it. The disgrace of being a homie was balanced by the specialness of being English. But how far away we were from the rest of the world! I knew only too well, because of the time that lay between my parents’ coming and going, what distance meant. You measured it in days and weeks, not miles.
School was on hold for me, while I recuperated. I managed to forget about it. One Sunday afternoon Jane and I were sent out to play in Cranmer Square. Frank had come south. He was to take us out for the afternoon; we were to drive to visit the black swans which lived on a lake outside the city. No, he was not coming into the house, the landlady would not like it, we were to wait for him outside. We had ribbons put in our hair. I had the check dress Jane had worn for the Rita Angus portrait, which fitted me by now. There was no choice. We were given no option as to what to wear. There wasn’t much to choose from, anyway. School uniform and Sunday best and that was about all.
Jane’nFay went out to play. She skipped and I played sevens. We didn’t speak much. We improved our skills while we waited. I could read what was in most people’s heads but seldom these days what was in hers. I thought it might be something to do with the colour of her eyes. She had dark, dark brown eyes like my mother’s, and mine were bright blue like my father’s. I adored her and felt apologetic, the cuckoo chick in her nest, growing larger and larger, wearing her cast-offs, and resented for something I couldn’t help, for being there. I daresay most younger siblings feel like this.
Time was getting on. No sign of a father. I wanted Jane to go back inside to ask what the time was, but she wouldn’t. I went. It was three o’clock. I played more sevens but kept dropping the ball: Jane kept stepping on the rope. In the next hour hope and disappointment fought it out, and minute by minute disappointment gained ground until there was no hope left. The sun sank lower across Cranmer Square: I came to the understanding that I was not central to the universe, and that no amount of wishing and hoping would twist it to my convenience, and the sun would just go on sinking.
Around four-thirty my mother called us in and said, ‘Well, he’s not coming, is he?’ in the tone of one who was disappointed but not surprised. I sat down to read Ferdinand the Bull yet again, practising insouciance. I did not like people being sorry for me. Just sit down and smell the flowers, like Ferdinand. I have, and I date it to that day, become expert at receiving bad news. I keep my face still, gain time to reassess my situation, to retreat or advance as required. Grit the teeth, face a changed world, go back afterwards to mop up the emotion. I was more like a New Zealander than a homie in this, and have stayed so. New Zealanders go into danger gear at the drop of a hat: you don’t see them emoting all over the place. That’s why they run Aid Agencies and such like: they don’t panic.
Later my mother said he’d had flu and hadn’t been able to come. I didn’t quite believe her. I thought it was probably something to do with Ina, or Jean, or Helen. Be that as it may, he had gone back to the North without stopping by.
We left the boarding-house. I was so pleased I tried to set the magpie free of its chain: my mother said it only attacked because it was unhappy. But it preferred its imprisonment: it wouldn’t let me near it. I had rather hoped for a bungalow like other people had but my mother had found us rooms above a disused stable in an old mews on the road out to Papanui. Poverty is a stubborn thing: you seldom escape it with one bound. But the great thing was that I no longer had to go to the Convent. I was to go to a school called Elmwood instead.
There had been some upturn in the powder-box trade, and my mother had sold a novel to her publishers, and received a cheque for fifty pounds. She seemed to have changed her mind about the desirability of a convent education for me, though Jane was to stay at St Mary’s for another year. Now I was at a school of my own our names began to separate out.
Elmwood was run on progressive lines: there were no turrets and towers, it was just a great space of green grass interrupted by low, airy custom-built classrooms. There was a swimmingpool. Nobody lied or stole or cringed. Teachers read us stories. Lessons were out of doors on the verandas. We sang English folksongs about nightingales and strawberry fairs: we English-country-danced. ‘Home’ was respected and I was a homie. We practised the Alexander Technique once a week, and learned how to stand properly, and no one did anything dreadful or sudden. It was observable that education was meant to prepare you for adult life, not terrify you into submission.
The headmaster did for a time instead of a father. Mr Eggleton was a plain, kind, dull man with a face as long as his legs: I could see the advantage of dullness: it went along with reliability. If Mr Eggleton said he’d be at a certain place at a certain time he would be. He taught us calligraphy: joined-up writing was not enough: now you must make the words look graceful. We used his name to practise on because of all the above the line and below the line loops, and when my handwriting becomes indecipherable I will practise it the sooner to return to legibility. He would let me hold his hand. There were boys at this school, which was thrilling, but the girls didn’t play with them.
My only social problem at Elmwood was the march into school when the bell rang for the end of playtime. It was 1937. Militarism was beginning to infiltrate even here on this grassy slope at the back of beyond. Ferdinand the Bull might prefer to sit and smell the flowers than fight, but he was increasingly on his own. We marched into school in pairs, heads held high, in step, swinging arms. I was the new girl, arrived mid-term. I had to walk on my own, unpartnered. I hated that.
I did not want to be despised, to find myself in the wrong
