Jim laughed. "Don't forget there's a woman too, Jo, with blue eyes and yellow hair, who'll promise you something else before she shakes hands with you. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."
"The heat's making you balmy," said Jo. But he dug his knees into the horse. We shambled on. I half fell asleep, and had a sort of uneasy dream that the horses were not moving forward at all—then that I was on a rocking-horse, and my old mother was scolding me for raising such a fearful dust from the drawing-room carpet. "You've entirely worn off the pattern of the carpet," I heard her saying, and she gave the reins a tug. I snivelled and woke to find Jim leaning over me, maliciously smiling.
"That was a case of all but," said he. "I just caught you. What'sup? Been bye-bye?"
"No!" I raised my head. "Thank the Lord we're arriving somewhere."
We were on the brow of the hill, and below us there was a whare roofed with corrugated iron. It stood in a garden, rather far back from the road—a big paddock opposite, and a creek and a clump of young willow trees. A thin line of blue smoke stood up straight from the chimney of the whare; and as I looked a woman came out, followed by a child and a sheep dog—the woman carrying what appeared to me a black stick. She made gestures at us.
The horses put on a final spurt, Jo took off his wideawake, shouted, threw out his chest, and began singing, "I don't care, for don't you see..." The sun pushed through the pale clouds and shed a vivid light over the scene. It gleamed on the woman's yellow hair, over her flapping pinafore and the rifle she was carrying. The child hid behind her, and the yellow dog, a mangy beast, scuttled back into the whare, his tail between his legs. We drew rein and dismounted.
"Hallo," screamed the woman. "I thought you was three' awks. My kid comes runnin' in ter me. 'Mumma,' says she, 'there's three brown things comin' over the 'ill,' says she. An' I comes out smart, I can tell yer. 'They'll be' awks,' I says to her. Oh, the' awks about 'ere, yer wouldn't believe."
The "kid" gave us the benefit of one eye from behind the woman's pinafore—then retired again.
"Where's your old man?" asked Jim.
The woman blinked rapidly, screwing up her face.
"Away shearin'. Bin away a month. I suppose yer not goin' to stop, are yer? There's a storm comin' up."
"You bet we are," said Jo. "So you're on your lonely, missus?"
She stood, pleating the frills of her pinafore, and glancing from one to the other of us, like a hungry bird. I smiled at the thought of how Jim had pulled Jo's leg about her. Certainly her eyes were blue, and what hair she had was yellow, but ugly. She was a figure of fun. Looking at her, you felt there was nothing but sticks and wires under that pinafore—her front teeth were knocked out, she had red pulpy hands, and she wore on her feet a pair of dirty Bluchers.
"I'll go and turn out the horses," said Jim.
"Got any embrocation? Poi's rubbed herself to hell!"
"Arf a mo!" The woman stood silent a moment, her nostrils expanding as she breathed. Then she shouted violently. "I'd rather you didn't stop...You can't, and there's the end of it. I don't let out that paddock any more. You'll have to go on; I ain't got nothing!"
"Well, I'm blest!" said Jo, heavily. He pulled me aside. "Gone a bit off'er dot," he whispered. "Too much alone, you know" very significantly. "Turn the sympathetic tap on' er, she'll come round all right."
But there was no need—she had come round by herself.
"Stop if yer like!" she muttered, shrugging her shoulders. To me—"I'll give yer the embrocation if yer come along."
"Right-o, I'll take it down to them." We walked together up the garden path. It was planted on both sides with cabbages. They smelled like stale dish-water. Of flowers there were double poppies and sweet-williams. One little patch was divided off by pawa shells—presumably it belonged to the child—for she ran from her mother and began to grub in it with a broken clothes-peg. The yellow dog lay across the doorstep, biting fleas; the woman kicked him away.
"Gar-r, get away, you beast the place ain't tidy. I 'aven't 'ad time ter fix things to-day—been ironing. Come right in."
It was a large room, the walls plastered with old pages of English periodicals. Queen Victoria's Jubilee appeared to be the most recent number. 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