A table with an ironing board and wash tub on it, some wooden forms, a black horsehair sofa, and some broken cane chairs pushed against the walls. The mantelpiece above the stove was draped in pink paper, further ornamented with dried grasses and ferns and a coloured print of Richard Seddon. There were four doors—one, judging from the smell, let into the "Store," one on to the "backyard," through a third I saw the bedroom. Flies buzzed in circles round the ceiling, and treacle papers and bundles of dried clover were pinned to the window curtains.
I was alone in the room; she had gone into the store for the embrocation. I heard her stamping about and muttering to herself: "I got some, now where did I put that bottle? It's behind the pickles no, it ain't." I cleared a place on the table and sat there, swinging my legs. Down in the paddock I could hear Jo singing and the sound of hammer strokes as Jim drove in the tent pegs. It was sunset. There is no twilight in our New Zealand days, but a curious half-hour when everything appears grotesque—it frightens—as though the savage spirit of the country walked abroad and sneered at what it saw. Sitting alone in the hideous room I grew afraid. The woman next door was a long time finding that stuff. What was she doing in there? Once I thought I heard her bang her hands down on the counter, and once she half moaned, turning it into a cough and clearing her throat. I wanted to shout "Buck up!" but I kept silent.
"Good Lord, what a life!" I thought. "Imagine being here day in, day out, with that rat of a child and a mangy dog. Imagine bothering about ironing. Mad, of course she's mad! Wonder how long she's been here—wonder if I could get her to talk."
At that moment she poked her head round the door.
"Wot was it yer wanted?" she asked.
"Embrocation."
"Oh, I forgot. I got it, it was in front of the pickle jars."
She handed me the bottle.
"My, you do look tired, you do! Shall I knock yer up a few scones for supper! There's some tongue in the store, too, and I'll cook yer a cabbage if you fancy it."
"Right-o." I smiled at her. "Come down to the paddock and bring the kid for tea."
She shook her head, pursing up her mouth.
"Oh no. I don't fancy it. I'll send the kid down with the things and a billy of milk. Shall I knock up a few extry scones to take with yer ter-morrow?"
"Thanks."
She came and stood by the door.
"How old is the kid?"
"Six—come next Christmas. I'ad a bit of trouble with 'er one way an' another. I 'adn't any milk till a month after she was born and she sickened like a cow."
"She's not like you—takes after her father?"
Just as the woman had shouted her refusal at us before, she shouted at me then.
"No, she don't! She's the dead spit of me. Any fool could see that. Come on in now, Else, you stop messing in the dirt."
I met Jo climbing over the paddock fence.
"What's the old bitch got in the store?" he asked.
"Don't know—didn't look."
"Well, of all the fools. Jim's slanging you. What have you been doing all the time?"
"She couldn't find this stuff. Oh, my shakes, you are smart!"
Jo had washed, combed his wet hair in a line across his forehead, and buttoned a coat over his shirt. He grinned.
Jim snatched the embrocation from me. I went to the end of the paddock where the willows grew and bathed in the creek. The water was clear and soft as oil. Along the edges held by the grass and rushes, white foam tumbled and bubbled. I lay in the water and looked up at the trees that were still a moment, then quivered lightly, and again were still. The air smelt of rain. I forgot about the woman and the kid until I came back to the tent. Jim lay by the fire, watching the billy boil.
I asked where Jo was, and if the kid had brought our supper.
"Pooh," said Jim, rolling over and looking up at the sky. "Didn't you see how Jo had been titivating? He said to me before he went up to the whare, 'Dang it! she'll look better by night light—at any rate, my buck, she's female flesh!'"
"You had Jo about her looks—you had me, too."
"No—look here. I can't make it out. It's four years since I came past this way, and I stopped here two days. The husband was a pal of mine once, down the West Coast—a fine, big chap, with a voice on him like a trombone. She'd been barmaid down the Coast—as pretty as a wax doll. The coach used to come this way then once a fortnight, that was before they opened the railway up Napier way, and she had no end of a time! Told me once in a confidential moment that she knew one hundred and twenty-five different ways of kissing!"
"Oh, go on, Jim! She isn't the same woman!"
"Course she is I can't make it out. What I think is the old man's cleared out and left her: that's all my eye about shearing. Sweet life! The only people who come through now are Maoris and sundowners!"
Through the dark we saw the gleam of the kid's pinafore. She trailed over to us with a basket in her hand, the milk billy in the other. I unpacked the basket, the child standing by.
"Come over here," said Jim, snapping his fingers at her.
She went, the lamp from the inside of the tent cast a bright light over her. A mean, undersized brat, with whitish hair, and weak eyes. She stood, legs wide apart and her stomach protruding.
"What do you do all day?" asked Jim.
She scraped out one tear with her little finger, looked at the result and said, "Draw."
"Huh! What do you draw? Leave your ears alone!"
"Pictures."
"What on?"
"Bits of butter paper an' a pencil of my Mumma's."
"Boh! What a lot of words at one time!" Jim rolled his eyes at her. "Baa-lambs and moo-cows?"
"No, everything. I'll draw all of you when you're gone, and your horses and the tent, and that one"—she pointed to me—"with no clothes on in the creek. I looked at her where she couldn't see me from."
"Thanks very much. How ripping of you," said Jim. "Where's Dad?"
The kid pouted. "I won't tell you because I don't like yer face!" She started operations on the other ear.
"Here," I said. "Take the basket, get along home and tell the other man supper's ready."
"I don't want to."
"I'll give you a box on the ear if you don't," said Jim, savagely.
"Hie! I'll tell Mumma. I'll tell Mumma." The kid fled.
We ate until we were full, and had arrived at the smoke stage before Jo came back, very flushed and jaunty, a whisky bottle in his hand.
"'Ave a drink—you two!" he shouted, carrying off matters with a high hand.
