Between My Father and the King (8 page)

That night when I got into bed beside Joan she was asleep and I could see by the marks on her face that she had been crying, and I looked under my pillow, feeling a bunch in it, and the purple lacy dance dress was there, all crumpled, and I knew she'd been wearing it all the time in the bedroom, and her shoes too, and that when she died she'd not leave her dance dress in the pear tree or under the mattress, she'd take it with her to Alco Hall where there'd be plenty of room for her to dance, knowing how without Professor Plot's free lessons, up and down beneath the clouds drifting white as flour, black and shining as silk.

In those days when you came home from school you felt unhappy, you didn't know why. As if all day you had been locked with happy things like school and Miss Heafy reading French poetry or reciting with her grey eyes fixed earnestly on her book, and her voice full of sadness, ‘Once Paumanok, when the lilac-scent was in the air'. As if you had been inside the real world but now, at four-fifteen walking up the path to the funny little house with the rusty roof and the cracked front window, you were being unlocked from all that mattered. Unlocked and made lonely.

You felt lonelier that day in October because Miss Heafy had reminded you about the two guineas. She had been correcting your précis and she had suddenly looked up at you. ‘By the way, Doreen, I don't think you've given me your two guineas. Can you let me have them tomorrow?' And you had smiled and said carelessly, ‘I'll bring them tomorrow, Miss Heafy. I forgot all about it.' And then you had blushed because you hadn't forgotten about
it at all; it was only because you were frightened to ask Dad.

You were still frightened to ask him and as you walked up the path you tried to imagine what you would say.

‘It's for matric. The entries have to be in by the end of the week. The entry fee's two guineas, Dad. I promised Miss Heafy I'd bring it tomorrow.' Dad would be reading his paper or talking politics with Don. He'd say something about bills and you'll have to wait till the end of the month till I've settled with Mason's and then he'd go on talking about the government and farming and maybe he'd raise his voice if Don didn't agree with him.

It was silly, you supposed, to be frightened of Dad — who had taken you for picnics when you were small, who had caught butterfish and crabs for you, and let you handle the Greenwell's Glory and Red-Tipped Governor, and wind his fishing reel and sit in the front of the car; who had sung you to sleep at nights —

Come for a trip in my airship,

Come for a sail midst the stars;

who had brought home coconuts and oranges on Saturday nights and made Santa Claus come twice in one year when you and Don and Susie and Joan had chickenpox. But it was funny about Dad. He shouted at and sometimes struck Don when they argued and he spoke harshly to you and anyway you had always been frightened about money — ever since the time Mr Mason's bill had been twenty pounds and you told your best friend about it and Dad found out and was angry, you didn't know why. You had felt proud and awed to have a bill of twenty pounds. Of course it made Mum cry and Dad thump his fist on the table, but hadn't you
and Susie and Joan and Don sworn a secret oath in the bedroom — we'll be millionaires, see if we don't?

You didn't care about money now of course. You were fifteen. You were in love with Miss Heafy and you used notepaper that folded in two, and you read Keats, pretending to be Madeline with Porphyro's heart on fire for you, and Isabella weeping over her pot of basil, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, ‘full beautiful — a faery's child': you read Shelley too, and Shelley had renounced all worldly wealth, so you didn't much care about money, except of course about the two guineas and Miss Heafy smiling and saying, ‘Thank you, Doreen,' as if she had known all along that you would bring them and that you weren't poor even if you did have to wear your uniform in the weekends.

So you walked into the kitchen that afternoon. Mum was there writing a letter to Aunty Winifred and Gypsy the cat was purring knottily three-threads-in-a-thrum, three-threads-in-a-thrum, under her chair.

‘Well, Dor,' she said. ‘How did school go today?' You wanted to say, ‘Mum, Miss Heafy's awfully nice. I love her smile. She read us “Once Paumanok”, and “Dans le Nord . . . est arrivée une petite créole”. And she gave me Very Good for my paraphrase,' but because you were thinking of the two guineas you said abruptly, ‘School's okay, Mum. Where's Susie?' And then Don and Susie came in and Don started talking about the freezing works and the foundry and the war news, and everybody seemed to be talking at once, but you sat, not speaking because you were thinking about the two guineas and what you would say to Dad.

‘I specially promised Miss Heafy. May I, Dad?' And Dad would say, ‘You'll have to wait till the end of the month, Dor.'
And you would say, ‘All right' and then go into your bedroom and Mum would half-open the door, and know you were almost crying and say it wouldn't be long till the end of the month; but she wouldn't understand because you couldn't tell her about Miss Heafy, smiling and saying, ‘Thank you, Doreen.' Miss Heafy who was even lovelier than Imogen or Desdemona or Miranda.

Before you realised, it was teatime, and then it was after tea with Susie reading in the dining room and Don shaving in the bathroom and you and Mum and Dad sitting alone in the kitchen. You had ‘Once Paumanok' in front of you, but you weren't reading it, you were thinking of Mum and Dad and yourself, how each of you seemed unlocked from the other and locked inside yourselves. You wondered why you couldn't tell Mum and Dad about Miss Heafy and why Schubert's music made Dad angry and why Mum said, ‘Yes, turn it off, Dor,' although you knew she liked Schubert, and then you wondered again about being frightened. ‘It's for matric' — the words went over and over inside your brain, but you didn't say them, you couldn't, because you remembered the shilling you once stole and the time you had asked to go to the pictures with the class — that was years ago now, but you remembered — how Dad had laughed and said, ‘Gadding about' and told you to stay home. ‘It's for matric.' You wanted to tell him you would go to university and get your degree and earn money for the family, so they wouldn't have to take a ticket in every art union and be so disappointed when they didn't win; but you couldn't say anything; and then, it seemed like a strange voice, but it was your own voice saying:

‘Dad!'

He looked up. ‘Well?'

‘Can I take two guineas tomorrow? For my matric fee . . . please?'

Mum tapped her fingers nervously on the edge of the table. Dad looked across at her and said, ‘I think we can manage it, Dor. I'll leave your mother the money for you tomorrow morning.' And you murmured ‘Thank you Dad,' and you kissed them goodnight and said, ‘I'm going to bed now'. And you went into the bedroom.

You lay in bed remembering how Dad had caught butterfish and crabs for you when you were small, and taken you for picnics in the car, and sung you to sleep at nights,

Come for a trip in my airship,

Come for a sail midst the stars.

And you knew you weren't unlocked and lonely anymore. You remembered how Dad had taken you to Dunedin once and how, when he went outside the gate, you thought he was going away forever and ever; and how he used to sing

Don't go down in the mine, Dad,

Dreams very often come true,

and you would hide under the table and cry; and you remembered his face when Joan was killed, that awful day three years ago.

You lay thinking of him and of ‘Once Paumanok' and the little creole girl, and then, because you were fifteen and sentimental you took your diary from under your mattress and wrote, ‘I love Miss Heafy very much and I am going to work hard for matric.'

A mixture of mother and kindly aunt, she invited the confidence of children throughout most of the South Island, and even from farther north in the foreign places beyond Cook Strait. There were certain rules and regulations attached to the privilege of sharing secrets with her, open secrets printed on the inside back page of the
Daily Times
every Monday morning. You had to have a nom de plume. That was most important.

When we decided to write to Dot we chose noms de plume which unfortunately had to be changed because they were already taken. Most boys wanted to be Baden Powell or Sergeant Dan from the packet of breakfast food; most girls elected to be fairies or butterflies or blossoms. When Dot received notice of the chosen names, invariably she had to alter them, and had worked out her own system whereby a child who wanted to be called Pollyanna would not be too disappointed if she were given the name Good Pollyanna, or Pollyanna the Second, or Mary Pollyanna.

We were not original children. We kept to the beaten track of names, with the result that throughout our years of confiding in Dot we were known by secondhand noms de plume. My three sisters chose Queen Charlotte, Apple Blossom, Silver Fairy. When their first letters appeared in the conventional form from which all, as children, dared not depart: ‘Dear Dot, Please may I join your happy band of Little Folk. I am eight/nine/seven and in Standard Three/Two . . .', concluding with, ‘Love to all the Little Folk and your own dear self', they were dismayed to find that their names had been changed (‘We already have a Queen Charlotte, Apple Blossom, Silver Fairy') to Good Queen Charlotte, Apple Petal, Dancing Fairy.

My brother suffered a similar fate. He was not granted his wish of being the hero on the packet of breakfast food — Sergeant Dan — for someone else had chosen it. He became a nonentity — Sergeant Dick.

And I, who dreamed of myself as Golden Butterfly, became Amber Butterfly, and was forced week after week to watch my confessions appearing under a name chosen by Dot while the original Golden Butterfly fluttered securely about the page — Dot's Page.

Although I was conventional, as most children are, I used to feel rather troubled when I wrote the effusive closing sentence which was the tradition of writers to Dot's Page.