Bliss, and other stories
“Curve your arms round her. Don’t keep them stiff like that. You’ll
drop her,” Isabel would say sternly.
Now they were standing on the verandah and holding back Snooker who
wanted to go into the house but wasn’t allowed to because Aunt Linda
hated decent dogs.
“We came over in the bus with Mum,” they said, “and we’re going to
spend the afternoon with you. We brought over a batch of our
gingerbread for Aunt Linda. Our Minnie made it. It’s all over nuts.”
“I skinned the almonds,” said Pip. “I just stuck my hand into a
saucepan of boiling water and grabbed them out and gave them a kind of
pinch and the nuts flew out of the skins, some of them as high as the
ceiling. Didn’t they, Rags?”
Rags nodded. “When they make cakes at our place,” said Pip, “we always
stay in the kitchen, Rags and me, and I get the bowl and he gets the
spoon and the egg beater. Sponge cake’s best. It’s all frothy stuff,
then.”
He ran down the verandah steps to the lawn, planted his hands on the
grass, bent forward, and just did not stand on his head.
“That lawn’s all bumpy,” he said. “You have to have a flat place for
standing on your head. I can walk round the monkey tree on my head at
our place. Can’t I, Rags?”
“Nearly,” said Rags faintly.
“Stand on your head on the verandah. That’s quite flat,” said Kezia.
“No, smarty,” said Pip. “You have to do it on something soft. Because
if you give a jerk and fall over, something in your neck goes click,
and it breaks off. Dad told me.”
“Oh, do let’s play something,” said Kezia.
“Very well,” said Isabel quickly, “we’ll play hospitals. I will be the
nurse and Pip can be the doctor and you and Lottie and Rags can be the
sick people.”
Lottie didn’t want to play that, because last time Pip had squeezed
something down her throat and it hurt awfully.
“Pooh,” scoffed Pip. “It was only the juice out of a bit of mandarin
peel.”
“Well, let’s play ladies,” said Isabel. “Pip can be the father and you
can be all our dear little children.”
“I hate playing ladies,” said Kezia. “You always make us go to church
hand in hand and come home and go to bed.”
Suddenly Pip took a filthy handkerchief out of his pocket. “Snooker!
Here, sir,” he called. But Snooker, as usual, tried to sneak away, his
tail between his legs. Pip leapt on top of him, and pressed him between
his knees.
“Keep his head firm, Rags,” he said, and he tied the handkerchief round
Snooker’s head with a funny knot sticking up at the top.
“Whatever is that for?” asked Lottie.
“It’s to train his ears to grow more close to his head—see?” said Pip.
“All fighting dogs have ears that lie back. But Snooker’s ears are a
bit too soft.”
“I know,” said Kezia. “They are always turning inside out. I hate
that.”
Snooker lay down, made one feeble effort with his paw to get the
handkerchief off, but finding he could not, trailed after the children,
shivering with misery.
9
Pat came swinging along; in his hand he held a little tomahawk that
winked in the sun.
“Come with me,” he said to the children, “and I’ll show you how the
kings of Ireland chop the head off a duck.”
They drew back—they didn’t believe him, and besides, the Trout boys had
never seen Pat before.
“Come on now,” he coaxed, smiling and holding out his hand to Kezia.
“Is it a real duck’s head? One from the paddock?”
“It is,” said Pat. She put her hand in his hard dry one, and he stuck
the tomahawk in his belt and held out the other to Rags. He loved
little children.
“I’d better keep hold of Snooker’s head if there’s going to be any
blood about,” said Pip, “because the sight of blood makes him awfully
wild.” He ran ahead dragging Snooker by the handkerchief.
“Do you think we ought to go?” whispered Isabel. “We haven’t asked or
anything. Have we?”
At the bottom of the orchard a gate was set in the paling fence. On the
other side a steep bank led down to a bridge that spanned the creek,
and once up the bank on the other side you were on the fringe of the
paddocks. A little old stable in the first paddock had been turned into
a fowl house. The fowls had strayed far away across the paddock down to
a dumping ground in a hollow, but the ducks kept close to that part of
the creek that flowed under the bridge.
Tall bushes overhung the stream with red leaves and yellow flowers and
clusters of blackberries. At some places the stream was wide and
shallow, but at others it tumbled into deep little pools with foam at
the edges and quivering bubbles. It was in these pools that the big
white ducks had made themselves at home, swimming and guzzling along
the weedy banks.
Up and down they swam, preening their dazzling breasts, and other ducks
with the same dazzling breasts and yellow bills swam upside down with
them.
“There is the little Irish navy,” said Pat, “and look at the old
admiral there with the green neck and the grand little flagstaff on his
tail.”
He pulled a handful of grain from his pocket and began to walk towards
the fowl-house, lazy, his straw hat with the broken crown pulled over
his eyes.
“Lid. Lid—lid—lid—lid——” he called.
“Qua. Qua—qua—qua—qua——” answered the ducks, making for land, and
flapping and scrambling up the bank they streamed after him in a long
waddling line. He coaxed them, pretending to throw the grain, shaking
it in his hands and calling to them until they swept round him in a
white ring.
From far away the fowls heard the clamour and they too came running
across the paddock, their heads thrust forward, their wings spread,
turning in their feet in the silly way fowls run and scolding as they
came.
Then Pat scattered the grain and the greedy ducks began to gobble.
Quickly he stooped, seized two, one under each arm, and strode across
to the children. Their darting heads and round eyes frightened the
children—all except Pip.
“Come on, sillies,” he cried, “they can’t bite. They haven’t any teeth.
They’ve only got those two little holes in their beaks for breathing
through.”
“Will you hold one while I finish with the other?” asked Pat. Pip let
go of Snooker. “Won’t I? Won’t I? Give us one. I don’t mind how much he
kicks.”
He nearly sobbed with delight when Pat gave the white lump into his
arms.
There was an old stump beside the door of the fowl-house. Pat grabbed
the duck by the legs, laid it flat across the stump, and almost at the
same moment down came the little tomahawk and the duck’s head flew off
the stump. Up the blood spurted over the white feathers and over his
hand.
When the children saw the blood they were frightened no longer. They
crowded round him and began to scream. Even Isabel leaped about crying:
“The blood! The blood!” Pip forgot all about his duck. He simply threw
it away from him and shouted, “I saw it. I saw it,” and jumped round
the wood block.
Rags, with cheeks as white as paper, ran up to the little head, put out
a finger as if he wanted to touch it, shrank back again and then again
put out a finger. He was shivering all over.
Even Lottie, frightened little Lottie, began to laugh and pointed at
the duck and shrieked: “Look, Kezia, look.”
“Watch it!” shouted Pat. He put down the body and it began to
waddle—with only a long spurt of blood where the head had been; it
began to pad away without a sound towards the steep bank that led to
the stream. . . . That was the crowning wonder.
“Do you see that? Do you see that?” yelled Pip. He ran among the little
girls tugging at their pinafores.
“It’s like a little engine. It’s like a funny little railway engine,”
squealed Isabel.
But Kezia suddenly rushed at Pat and flung her arms round his legs and
butted her head as hard as she could against his knees.
“Put head back! Put head back!” she screamed.
When he stooped to move her she would not let go or take her head away.
She held on as hard as she could and sobbed: “Head back! Head back!”
until it sounded like a loud strange hiccup.
“It’s stopped. It’s tumbled over. It’s dead,” said Pip.
Pat dragged Kezia up into his arms. Her sun-bonnet had fallen back, but
she would not let him look at her face. No, she pressed her face into a
bone in his shoulder and clasped her arms round his neck.
The children stopped screaming as suddenly as they had begun. They
stood round the dead duck. Rags was not frightened of the head any
more. He knelt down and stroked it, now.
“I don’t think the head is quite dead yet,” he said. “Do you think it
would keep alive if I gave it something to drink?”
But Pip got very cross: “Bah! You baby.” He whistled to Snooker and
went off.
When Isabel went up to Lottie, Lottie snatched away.
“What are you always touching me for, Isabel?”
“There now,” said Pat to Kezia. “There’s the grand little girl.”
She put up her hands and touched his ears. She felt something. Slowly
she raised her quivering face and looked. Pat wore little round gold
ear-rings. She never knew that men wore ear-rings. She was very much
surprised.
“Do they come on and off?” she asked huskily.
10
Up in the house, in the warm tidy kitchen, Alice, the servant girl, was
getting the afternoon tea. She was “dressed.” She had on a black stuff
dress that smelt under the arms, a white apron like a large sheet of
paper, and a lace bow pinned on to her hair with two jetty pins. Also
her comfortable carpet slippers were changed for a pair of black
leather ones that pinched her corn on her little toe something
dreadful. . . .
It was warm in the kitchen. A blow-fly buzzed, a fan of whity steam
came out of the kettle, and the lid kept up a rattling jig as the water
bubbled. The clock ticked in the warm air, slow and deliberate, like
the click of an old woman’s knitting needle, and sometimes—for no
reason at all, for there wasn’t any breeze—the blind swung out and
back, tapping the window.
Alice was making water-cress sandwiches. She had a lump of butter on
the table, a barracouta loaf, and the cresses tumbled in a white cloth.
But propped against the butter dish there was a dirty, greasy little
book, half unstitched, with curled edges, and while she mashed the
butter she read:
“To dream of black-beetles drawing a hearse is bad. Signifies death of
one you hold near or dear, either father, husband, brother, son, or
intended. If beetles crawl backwards as you watch them it means death
from fire or from great height such as flight of stairs, scaffolding,
etc.
“Spiders. To dream of spiders creeping over you is good. Signifies
large sum of money in near future. Should party be in family way an
easy confinement may be expected. But care should be taken in sixth
month to avoid eating of probable present of shell fish. . . .”
How many thousand birds I see.
Oh, life. There was Miss Beryl. Alice dropped the knife and slipped the
_Dream Book_ under the butter dish. But she hadn’t time to hide it
quite, for Beryl ran into the kitchen and up to the table, and the
first thing her eye lighted on were those greasy edges. Alice saw Miss
Beryl’s meaning little smile and the way she raised her eyebrows and
screwed up her eyes as though she were not quite sure what that could
be. She decided to answer if Miss Beryl should ask her: “Nothing as
belongs to you, Miss.” But she knew Miss Beryl would not ask her.
Alice was a mild creature in reality, but she had the most marvellous
retorts ready for questions that she knew would never be put to her.
The composing of them and the turning of them over and over in her mind
comforted her just as much as if they’d been expressed. Really, they
kept her alive in places where she’d been that chivvied she’d been
afraid to go to bed at night with a box of matches on the chair in case
she bit the tops off in her sleep, as you might say.
“Oh, Alice,” said Miss Beryl. “There’s one extra to tea, so heat a