Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull (2 page)

Chapter Three

A Big Family

“I see you've got some new neighbours,” said Uncle Trev, popping his head around my door.

“Mum didn't say anything about new neighbours.”

“They're moving into Swift's old place. They were carrying in their wire-wove beds and mattresses as I came past just now. Quite a big family, by the look of them. Where's your mother?”

“She put on her green costume and her hat and gloves.”

“Then she's gone up to Matamata,” said Uncle Trev.

“She was getting a lift with Mrs Burns. She had to go to the bank, and to the chemist's for my medicine, and she's returning that curtain material she got on appro from Mr Cummings, because it wasn't the right shade, and heaven only knows if he'll have anything near what she wants.”

“She'll be gone a while then.”

“Mum said, ‘If your uncle comes in, you're not to believe a word he says.' ”

Uncle Trev winked.

“I wonder who the new people are?” I said.

“Elephants.”

“That's a funny sort of name.”

“Elephants,” Uncle Trev said again.

“Elephant isn't a name.”

“There's some pretty odd names about these days. But that's not what I meant. They're elephants, you know, with trunks.”

“Elephants? Moving into Swift's old place?”

Uncle Trev nodded again. “You should have seen the size of the kitchen table they were carrying in. It's going to be a bit noisy, having elephants in the street.”

“Why?”

“They're noisy eaters, elephants: their stomachs rumble something terrible, and they love dancing. They make a tremendous din, stamping around at all hours of the night. Me and your mother, we lived next door to a family of elephants at Mercury Bay.”

“What was their name?”

“Prendergast. Bob Prendergast worked in the bush, rolling kauri logs into the river from the end of the Mill Creek tramline with his tusks and trunk. That's why they came to the Bay, so he could get work.”

“Why do they dance at night?”

“They dance half the day as well, but you don't notice the noise so much then. Your grandmother used to say, ‘Goodness only knows when their children get to sleep.' ”

“She sounds like Mum,” I told Uncle Trev.

“Your mother does rather take after your grandmother.”

“Did you get to know the Prendergasts?”

“We went to school with the kids. And Mr Prendergast used to give us rides. He'd curl his trunk, lift me up, and sit me on top of his head with my feet dangling behind his big ears. They felt quite soft on my toes, a bit like warm blotting paper.

“
‘
Are you comfortable?' he'd ask, and away he'd go, dancing. I liked it, but your mother screamed when he offered to lift her up. She didn't want anything to do with the Prendergasts.”

“How'd their kids get on at school?”

“They were good at arithmetic, the whole lot of them, but they couldn't spell to save themselves. They were Indian elephants. One of the boys sat with me in one of those old double desks. I did his spelling and he did my sums; it worked out okay.”

“How did he fit into a desk?”

“He had a bit of trouble with his trunk. He'd tuck it under the seat, but when he concentrated on his spelling it would uncurl across the floor and the teacher would trip over it.

“
‘
Call your trunk home,' he'd tell Addison.”

“Was that his name?”

“Addison? Yes. And he had an older brother, Percy, and a sister called Emily.”

“Were there just the three of them?”

“There was a whole swag of them: those three; an older sister, Gertie, who was married and lived at Tairua; another sister in the primers – I don't remember her name; three little ones at home; and several grown-up boys whose tusks were big enough for them to work in the bush with their father.”

“What happened to them?”

“They bought a farm the other side of the river, near the Kaimarama, and moved out there. They pulled themselves across the river in a cage hanging from a wire rope, but they were so heavy it kept stretching so they got wet. In the end, Bob Prendergast twisted together umpteen lengths of number eight wire and built a swing bridge. The kids used to sway across it each morning to get to school. In those days it was a sole-charge school, Kaimarama – just one tiny classroom – so the walls bulged when all the Prendergasts were there.”

“It must have been fun, knowing elephants.”

“I suppose it was, specially watching them crossing the swing bridge on a windy day. After they shifted out to the Kaimarama, we had some lions move in next door. The Trumpets.”

“Was that their name?”

“Trumpet. They were real lions, you know, with manes and teeth and claws.”

“Wasn't that dangerous?”

“Sometimes. I remember Mr Trumpet once ate a couple of kids – just for giving cheek. Your mother and I were too scared to go past their place after that, so we cut across the paddocks and got through the back fence into the school grounds.”

“What about the kids that got eaten?”

“I suppose their parents complained, but things were different in those days. Anyway, the elephant family, the Prendergasts, they always came into the Bay when the Whakatane steamer called in on its way up to Auckland. It was the old
Ranginui
, the Northern Steamship Company.

“Well, the Prendergasts were going past our place on their way down to the wharf – everyone went there on Steamer Day – and they saw the lions living next door to us, and chased them over the Coromandel Range and told them never to come back. I can remember Mr Prendergast saying to your grandmother that if only she'd let him know earlier he'd have got rid of them at once.”

“True?”

Uncle Trev nodded. “Elephants and lions don't get on, you know.”

“Well, it'll be good having elephants in Swift's old place,” I said, “just in case some lions move into the house on the corner. It's been standing empty for ages.”

“So it has.” Uncle Trev made himself a cup of tea, brought it out to my room, and gave me a bit of Louise cake. I'd heard him going through Mum's tins; there were crumbs on his moustache.

“I don't think your mother would put up with any nonsense from those lions. If they move into that old place and eat you, she'll go straight along and give them a piece of her mind. You can be sure of that.”

“Do you think you might have a talk to the elephants,” I said, “and ask them if they'll chase the lions away?”

“Taihoa, they're only moving in today. They won't have got all their furniture inside yet, and there aren't any lions around Ward Street.”

“I just thought – in case…”

“There's no sense in looking for trouble before it happens. I'd better get going. I don't want to be here when your mother gets home and finds I've been into her cake tins.”

“I won't tell her.”

“It's the first thing she looks for when she gets home. I know, because it's what your grandmother used to do. She had such remarkable eyes, she could tell if I'd just taken the lid off a tin and looked at the cake. I licked a piece once, and she knew it. She threw it out to the birds. Another time, I only looked at the tin – without even taking off the lid – but she knew.”

I heard him washing his cup and putting it away in the cupboard, and tipping the tea leaves out of the teapot, so Mum wouldn't know he'd been. “Hooray,” he yelled, and was gone. His lorry backfired down the road.

It was going to be fun, having elephants just along the street. I couldn't wait to tell Mum about the big family next door.

Chapter Four

Why Mum Washed All Her Cups All Over Again

Mum came home full of talk about everyone she'd seen in Matamata.

“Mrs Burns had to get home early so she could help Mr Burns milk. He's not been too well, she said, put his back out doing some stumping, and it's not getting any better.”

“I thought you might bring her in for a cup of tea.”

“I just told you she had to get home for milking, but she said to say hello for her. You wouldn't believe how long it took to get our shopping done. Arawa Street was jam-packed full of people.”

Mum was pulling off her right glove first, just a tiny bit at a time, drawing off the fingers, inch by inch – no, half an inch at a time – then peeling off the palm, taking the freed glove and smoothing the fingers. “I wore these with my going-away outfit, after my wedding,” she said, starting to take the glove off her left hand. “They were expensive. You've got to be careful not to pull them out of shape.” She smoothed her left glove, took them both, and went into her room.

I knew what she was doing now: standing at her dressing table, putting her gloves away in the top drawer. When I was little, I liked to open the drawer and look at Mum's gloves, like two black hands crouching among her hankies. I used to point my finger at them, but never dared touch in case they grabbed me.

Now she'd be standing, looking at herself in the mirror, pulling out her hatpins, lifting off her hat with both hands, stepping back, putting it into the top of her wardrobe, and stepping across to the mirror again, smoothing her hair, patting it into place.

“Matamata was full of people,” she said again, with the little grunt that meant she'd taken off her corsets and was rubbing her waist where they always caught her. “You wouldn't believe how long it took just to walk down the street, saying hello to this one and that. And I was in the middle of having such a lovely talk to Mrs Sweeney from out Te Poi, with the big rhododendron on her front lawn, and suddenly there was that friend of your uncle, that Mr Henry, gawping, nodding, and bobbing his head at me. And him still wearing his gumboots and that disgraceful old hat.”

“Did you say hello to him?”

“Outside the bank in Arawa Street, in front of all those respectably dressed people? I gave him a distant nod, that's what I did, so he went for his life. As if it's not bad enough, your uncle wanting to embarrass me in public, without his uncouth friends trying to show they know me.”

Mr Henry was one of Uncle Trev's neighbours, and he was forever borrowing something. “Gotta hacksaw, Trev?” he'd ask. “Gotta hammer? Gotta shovel, Trev?” And once he'd borrowed something, he never brought it back. When Uncle Trev wanted to fix anything, he had to go and borrow his own tools back again.

“It's easier than keeping track of things on my own place,” he said. “If I leave a shovel in the drain, or leaning against a post at my place, it falls over and disappears in the long grass, and I can't find it till I trip over it. But if it's over at Gotta's, I know exactly where it will be. If it's not in his cowshed or kitchen, then it's under his bed. He's a very tidy sort of rooster, Old Gotta. Keeps everything he borrows in the same place. Saves me a lot of hunting around.”

Uncle Trev grinned and looked at me.

“
‘
Gotta wheelbarrow, Gotta?' I say to Old Gotta.

“
‘
Haven't gotta wheelbarrow, Trev.' He always denies borrowing anything, but I just go and pull it out from under his bed. ‘What's this then, Gotta?' I ask, and he looks away and whistles.”

I was so busy thinking of the time Uncle Trev found his wheelbarrow under Gotta Henry's bed, I hadn't seen Mum come into my room. She'd changed out of her green tweed costume, the two-piece she always wore for going into Matamata.

“I hope you didn't get out of bed while I was out,” she said. “What's that smell?”

“I can't smell anything.”

“Well, I can. That uncle of yours has been here, he and that smelly old dog of his, I'll be bound. I can't put a foot outside the door but he's sticking his head in where he's no right to be. Filling you up with his nonsense and emptying my cake tins.

“Don't try to tell me he hasn't been here.” Mum swept out to the kitchen. “I thought as much. Burning coal to bring the kettle to the boil so he could make himself a cup of tea. He always does that. And he's washed his cup and put it away. Now I'll have to wash the lot of them all over again, because I don't know which one he used. What's this?”

I put my arms by my sides, pointed my toes towards the foot of my bed, closed my eyes, and lay very still. If I concentrated hard enough, I might float out the window and into the sky.

“He found my Louise cake, didn't he?” She was standing at my door, shaking the tin, the one with Queen Mary and King George V on the lid. “I don't need to open it,” she said. “I can tell that somebody's been into it, helping himself to my Louise cake. I suppose he gave you a piece, too?”

“Just a little bit,” I whispered.

“Then he's eaten several pieces on his own. Typical of the man. I'd have given him some to take home, but now he can go without. I'll teach him to go through my cake tins.”

I listened to Mum getting the fire going, putting the kettle on, making herself a cup of tea, then the creak of her chair.

“What did he have to say for himself?” she called. “And don't try to tell me he said nothing. My remarkable ears can hear every word he said echoing round my kitchen.”

“He said the new neighbours are moving in today. He saw them carrying their furniture inside.”

“Which new neighbours?”

“The elephants.”

Mum was standing at my door. She gave me a piece of Louise cake on a plate. “Now don't go making a mess with crumbs in your bed. What's that about elephants?”

“Uncle Trev said there's a family of elephants moving into Swift's old place. They've got enormous furniture, a huge kitchen table, and gigantic beds and –”

“And you listened to that nonsense?”

“And Uncle Trev said they'll keep us awake dancing at night, because he remembers the time at the Bay when you had neighbours who were elephants, the Prendergasts, and they kept your mother awake dancing all night, then they moved up the Kaimarama and built a swing bridge and went to the sole-charge school. And they came back into the Bay for Steamer Day and chased out the lions because they'd eaten a couple of kids for giving cheek.”

“In all my born days, I've never heard such a farrago of rubbish.” My mother felt my forehead. “You're running a temperature from listening to that man's stories. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times never to believe a word he says.”

“It must have been fun, being a kid in the Bay.”

“Things weren't easy,” said my mother. “And they weren't anything like what your uncle said. Now can you just be quiet for a minute while I enjoy my cup of tea? Why it is that a Christian body can't come home without finding the place overrun with wild animals, cake tins empty, dishes needing washing all over again – I'd like to know.”