Aunt Effie's Ark, page 7
“All those months some people were disporting yourselves on skis,” said Daisy, “I was the one who kept the fire burning in Aunt Effie’s bedroom.”
In fact, Peter and Marie carried up coal to Aunt Effie’s fire each morning and again in the evening before we went to bed. They would never let it go out. But they looked at us and shook their heads, and we knew we mustn’t say anything.
“Well,” said Daisy, clicking her teeth smugly, “one day I was cleaning out the ashpan, a thankless task nobody else ever thinks of doing.” Marie and Peter emptied the ashpan twice a day, but they held their tongues.
Daisy was enjoying herself. “While other people were hooliganing round in the snow, not doing their jobs, I saw cobwebs between the stag’s antlers and thought the stuffed heads might need dusting.
“I always say if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well! I tied a tea towel over my hair, put on my pinny and took the stepladder upstairs, the cobweb broom, dusters, a bucket of soapsuds to wash their glass eyes, and a hearth brush to give their fur a good brushing. And they weren’t there!
“I took the stepladder back downstairs. I carried down the bucket of soapsuds, the hearth brush, the cobweb broom, and the dusters. I took the tea towel off my hair. And I took off my pinny and folded it and put it back in the drawer.”
We sighed. Peter looked at us to keep quiet, and Marie put her hand over Alwyn’s mouth.
“Remember years ago when we were little?” Daisy asked, “We thought the stuffed heads used to change places?”
“All but the man’s head,” Jazz said. “It always hung in the same place – in the shadows.”
“We used to think they stood on little platforms and just stuck their heads through holes in the wall,” said Daisy. “And they didn’t just change places: sometimes we caught them blinking, and they even winked at us.”
“We remember!” For some reason we all wanted to please Daisy.
“Well,” she said, “I decided I’d look for them.”
She had gone upstairs alone to the floor above Aunt Effie’s enormous bedroom. We admired Daisy when she told us that. Going upstairs! Opening all those doors in the dark! On her own!
“How could you do it, Daisy?”
“Some of us know how to bear responsibility.” She smiled and clicked her teeth. “Even if it didn’t seem to matter to some people, I didn’t want to have to tell Aunt Effie all the stuffed heads had disappeared.”
In the end, after much talk, Daisy took us upstairs, showed us a door we hadn’t seen before, and opened it. Inside were all the missing heads – attached to their animals. Each wild animal stood in a stall. The elephant, the stag, the buffalo, and the antelope had mangers of hay. The crocodile had a trough of fish. His stall smelled rather strong. The lion was munching a leg of something, but covered it with a giant paw and snarled when he saw us looking. The snake had a troughful of mice that it was swallowing in a rather refined way, rather like Daisy at table. Each stall had a tap for water, and every one had a dunny in its own little room next door.
“Don’t say ‘dunny’!” said Daisy. “‘En suite’ sounds much nicer.”
“It’s a lot of hard work mucking out the barn each morning,” said Casey, looking at the elephant’s dunny. “Nobody has to muck out your stalls!”
The wild animals smiled in a way that reminded us of Daisy. “I think you’ll find we are somewhat superior to that rather common downstairs lot,” said a kudu with a high-bridged nose. It looked and sounded very like Daisy.
“We thought you were alive,” said Ann. “We noticed you changed places.”
“And sometimes you winked at us!” said Victor.
The kudu simpered and pointed her spiral horns at a little door in her stall. She slid back a tower bolt, opened the little door, and we were looking down into Aunt Effie’s bedroom.
“Go ahead,” said the other wild animals, and we stuck our heads through their little doors and grinned at each other. Aunt Effie lay snoring beneath us. The fire danced in the chimney. We could feel its warmth on our faces.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” Peter asked the wild animals.
“We’re perfectly happy, thank you.” As the kudu had said, they were all very well-mannered, except for the lion who growled, “I wouldn’t mind a taste of something different now and then!” He showed his huge teeth, and blazed a tawny eye at the gazelle who flicked his tail and stamped his delicate feet.
The elephant lurched over to the lion’s door. “We’ve got a long voyage ahead of us. Anyone who misbehaves, I sit on them!” The lion snarled but cringed and went back to licking and crunching his leg of meat.
“Something else for a change!” he muttered, but the elephant stamped one huge foot, and the lion put his ears back and rolled his eyes. It was easy to see he was scared of the elephant.
“Does Aunt Effie know you’re alive?” Lizzie asked a rose-spotted leopard, while Peter spoke quietly to the elephant.
“It was Aunt Effie’s idea,” said the leopard. “She can’t abide dead stuffed heads!” We stared at each other when the leopard said that – all wondering the same thing.
“Is it true those downstairs animals don’t have dunnies?” the leopard asked in a casual voice. But we noticed the other wild animals were listening for our reply.
“Thank you,” Peter said to the elephant. “Come on, everyone!” and he took us out so we didn’t have to answer the leopard’s question.
Swinging her arms importantly, Daisy led us downstairs. That night, she insisted on carving the roast we had for dinner and kept telling us to mind our table manners. “What’s the point of putting out serviettes if nobody uses them?” she complained. “Lizzie, they’re not for blowing your nose on!”
“Aunt Effie calls them table napkins,” said Casey.
“I always think serviette sounds nicer,” said Daisy. “It’s French…”
“Oh, là, là!” said Alwyn. “Très posh!”
Chapter Nine
Mr Bulawayo’s Stuffed Head
Jessie asked, “Why did the elephant say, ‘We’ve got a long voyage ahead of us’?” We looked at each other and shook our heads. And then Lizzie asked the question we’d all been too scared to ask.
“Where was the other stuffed head? The one of a man?”
We made a lot of noise scrambling into our bunks and pulling the blankets over our heads. None of us wanted to think about the man’s stuffed head, the one we’d all thought of when talking to the leopard.
“Was that his leg the lion was eating?” asked Lizzie so loudly we could all hear.
“I thought it had a foot on it–”
“Alwyn!” said Marie.
“That was a leg of wildebeeste,” said Peter. “I particularly noticed the long hair on the skin.
“Actually,” he said, “the elephant told me the man has a separate room – that’s why we didn’t meet him. The lion would like to eat the man, so the elephant sticks up for him. Remember the wildlife programmes we used to watch on telly? They always showed how elephants detest lions.”
We lay in our bunks and nodded. We loved watching the wildlife programmes before the Prime Minister said television was bad for our eyes and closed it down. The only channel she permitted now was one that broadcast parliament when she was speaking. We didn’t bother with it: MPs might sound like wild animals, but they’re not as interesting to watch.
Next day, after we’d finished our schoolwork, we met the man upstairs. His name was Mr Bulawayo. He was born in Te Awamutu, and his head looked like a cannon-ball with iron curls. He had pointed teeth that he filed sharp on Fridays. “For the weekend,” he said.
“Show us how you sharpen them?” Jessie asked. Mr Bulawayo took out his teeth – they were false – put them in a vice, and rasped away at them with a triangular file. They weren’t even made of steel, so we didn’t see any sparks. We were disappointed, but the little ones cheered up and ran shrieking when he chased them with the file.
Casey wanted him to bite holes in her ears with his pointed teeth so she could wear earrings, but Daisy said, “The child is far too young to be even thinking of wearing jewellery!” And she whispered loudly, “We don’t know if he’s a cannibal. Once he tastes blood, he’d be unable to control himself.”
Mr Bulawayo heard her and just laughed. “I don’t bite holes in people’s ears,” he told Daisy, “because I’m scared I might catch something off them.”
“Hmph!” Daisy wasn’t pleased.
“Aunt Effie’s a cannibal,” said Jazz. “She ate some sailors after her ship sank.”
Mr Bulawayo laughed again and said, “Aunt Effie tells some good stories.”
“What happened to your own teeth?” we asked.
“I was doing the pole vault at the Olympic Games, the time they were held in Te Kuiti. I was so nervous, I chewed the end of the pole too hard and wore out my teeth. I had to get false ones and asked the dentist to make them pointed. I was planning to get a job in a circus as ‘The Only Cannibal in Captivity’.” Mr Bulawayo rolled his dark eyes and snapped his teeth so the little ones backed away.
“The dentist was scared I might bite off his hand while he had it in my mouth, so he didn’t make my false teeth pointed enough. That’s why I have to file them sharp myself.”
“The first time I went to the Murder House,” Lizzie told Mr Bulawayo, “I bit the dental nurse. She puts on steel gloves when I go now.”
When the circus people found Mr Bulawayo’s cannibal teeth were false, they sacked him. He got a job collecting wild animals for the Auckland zoo, and met Aunt Effie looking for something to hang on her wall. She didn’t like dead stuffed heads, so she asked Mr Bulawayo if he could provide them live.
“The money’s good,” he said. “And Aunt Effie pays me extra to stick my own head through the wall. I’ve found I can give her bad dreams by grinning and showing my pointed teeth while she’s asleep. It helps pass the time.
“I used to enjoy winking and rolling my eyes at you,” he said to us. “Sometimes I pulled my head in and closed the little door, so you were never sure whether I was there or not.”
“We thought it was the shadows!”
“After a while,” said Mr Bulawayo, “the wild animals’ heads grow too big to go through their little doors. Besides, they get sick of standing there so, every two years, I take them back to Africa and hire a new lot. It saves much unpleasantness, especially from the lions.”
“When are you going to Africa again?” asked Lizzie.
“Not for a while,” said Mr Bulawayo. “We changed the wild animals just before Aunt Effie hibernated. Besides, we’ve got a long voyage ahead.”
It was the second time somebody had said something about a long voyage. Peter started to ask what he meant, but Mr Bulawayo’s mouth closed. His eyes glazed.
“They look like those brown alleys we won off Mr Jones when he tried to vers us at marbles,” said Jazz. Peter and Marie nodded.
“And his head,” Jazz said. “It looks as if it’s stuffed.”
All the wild animals suddenly looked as if they were stuffed. None of them moved or talked. The lion’s huge teeth looked made of white plaster, and his tongue was thick with red paint, but we were still scared. As we joined hands and ducked past his door, Alwyn roared at him. Everyone screamed, even Marie and Peter.
Peter locked the stuffed animals’ room and opened another door. We found rooms full of giant condors from South America, hummingbirds so small you had to look quickly to see them, rocs so tall we couldn’t see up to their heads, dodos, huias, even moas. One room had nothing but witchetty grubs. Another was full of huhus. There were rooms full of different ants. Some bit us, and we closed their door quickly. And there was a room filled with different kinds of maggots. We could hear them slithering and wriggling, a soft hissing roar.
When David and Victor picked up handfuls of the maggots, Daisy had a fit of the vapours. Marie had to drag her outside and burn some feathers under her nose. Then it was time to get over to the barn and feed the downstairs animals.
We told Hubert about the animals, beetles, maggots, and birds upstairs. “I often wondered,” he said, “why Aunt Effie had all those rooms added on. I thought she was trying to impress the neighbours.”
“They kept mentioning a long voyage,” said Peter.
“Goodness knows what they mean!” said Hubert. “They’re only wild animals, after all. Even if they do give themselves airs.” We looked at each other and thought of what the wild animals had said about the downstairs animals.
“What about their food?” asked Hubert.
“It comes down pipes into their stalls. Except for the lion. We think he goes out at night and hunts for his tucker.”
We didn’t say to Hubert that the wild animals and insects and birds and beasts upstairs had their own dunnies so their stalls didn’t need mucking out each day. We didn’t want to embarrass him, besides he mightn’t believe us.
“There’s one room full of different kinds of lice, Hubert,” said Lizzie, “and there’s another full of fleas!” Hubert smiled, and we could see he thought Lizzie was making it up.
That night, as we ate our tea, Peter said to Lizzie, “Perhaps you’d better not tell Hubert everything we see upstairs.”
“Why not?”
“He finds it a bit hard to believe in things he hasn’t seen himself.”
“They are so real! I held one of the fleas and it bit me!” cried Lizzie scratching a red lump on the back of her hand.
“We know they’re real,” said Peter. “It’s just Hubert and the downstairs animals who find it a bit much to believe.” But Lizzie and Jessie and Jared and Casey looked as if they didn’t quite know what Peter meant.
“We’ll go up the next flight of stairs tomorrow,” he said, “and see what’s up there.”
We raced through our schoolwork next day. As we went upstairs, Aunt Effie and the sleeping dogs snored. The stuffed heads hung on the walls, not looking at us. Peter held up a lantern, but we couldn’t see Mr Bulawayo.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t like a man’s head on the wall of my bedroom,” said Daisy.
“Would Mr Bulawayo watch Aunt Effie getting dressed?” asked Lizzie.
“With lovely manners such as his,” said Marie, “I’m sure he’d close his eyes.”
“I still don’t think it’s very nice,” said Daisy.
We climbed three flights of stairs that day and found a room with a very high ceiling. It was a while before we saw it was full of giraffes looking down at us. One held Jessie up by her collar so she could see out his window.
“It’s still raining!” called Jessie. “And the snow’s melting. Did it reach up to your window?”
The giraffe opened his mouth to reply, let go her collar, and Jessie dropped. Before she could hit the floor, he’d grabbed her by the collar again. Then all the little ones had to have a turn at being dropped.
Alwyn bellowed at a roomful of hippopotamuses who opened huge mouths and chased him. Peter locked their door just in time.
One dark room had a huge old, white python with milky blind eyes. He lay still, only opening his narrow mouth to flicker his tongue a couple of times, tasting the air.
“Is that you, Mowgli?” he asked, looking at Victor.
“No,” said Peter. “Mowgli died a hundred years ago.” The old python dropped his head. We tiptoed out, and Peter locked the door again.
“Who’s Mowgli?”
“A boy in a book by Mr Kipling,” said Peter. “I’ll read it to you when we’ve finished The Wind in the Willows.”
“What do pythons eat?” asked Jared.
“Goats, pigs, monkeys.”
“And small boys,” said Alwyn.
“Did the python eat Mowgli?”
“No. Mowgli spoke the language of all the animals. Kaa, the python, was his friend.”
“Did Mowgli grow up with the animals?”
“He was brought up by wolves.”
“Like the Tattooed Wolf?” asked David.
“Much friendlier than him,” said Peter, but Alwyn howled, “Ooowhooooo!” From behind the door Peter was about to open, we heard something howl back, “Ooowhooooo!”
We scuttled downstairs, locking the doors after us. The stuffed heads in Aunt Effie’s bedroom had disappeared. “Having their tea,” said Victor.
Peter had a quick look through the peep-hole. “It’s still raining,” he said. “And the snow’s still melting.”
“Where does all the water go?” asked Lizzie. “From all the rain and the melted snow?”
“Down the drains into the creeks. Down the creeks into the rivers. And down the rivers into the sea.”
“What about the sea? If it’s full of rain and melted snow, won’t it flood, too?”
“If it did that,” said Peter, “we’d be in trouble. We’d have to find a boat.”
“Aunt Effie said there’s sea shells on top of Mount Te Aroha,” said Jared. “That shows it used to be under the sea.”
“If Mount Te Aroha was under, we’d be miles and miles under here,” said Jazz.
“Think of all the water it would take!” Jessie held her hand above her head.
“Listen!” Alwyn said. “Can you hear lapping?” But Marie said he was scaring the little ones and to shut up. Outside it kept raining.
It rained for several months. The snow disappeared. The creek came over its banks. Puddles spread into pools. Pools joined, spread across the paddocks and made lakes. For a few days, the tops of the fence posts showed where the paddocks had been. Then they disappeared under the water.
“Did you hear something go bump last night?” Marie said at breakfast. And just then a jug of cream slid off the table. The porridge slopped out of the plates and on to the cloth.
“Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” said Daisy.
“Look!” David was staring at his glass. The milk inside it on was on a slant. There was a big bump. A smaller one. Something scraped along the floor. Aunt Effie’s enormous kitchen seemed to sway and roll. The backlog in the fireplace settled with a crackle of sparks, and the milk went level in our glasses again.
