Beryl Fletcher

Blog Number Eight: 28 December 2008

 

So much for Christmas then. I have survived, just, the unwanted Christmas cards that once flooded my mail box. You know the ones; chirping red robins sitting on a snow covered branch, or that fake old man in the red suit driving a sledge. I must be getting through to my family and friends though, because this year, I got cards with pictures of native birds and pohutukawa trees. Two were standouts. My granddaughter who designs and makes her own cards gave me one decorated with pentacles and instructing me in big bold silver letters HAVE A MERRY HEXMAS. And a dear friend, currently living in northern England and coping with icy winds and snow drifts, sent me a card with a photo of New York City on it because “Glittering NYC is where I’m not-so we have that in common this Christmas”.

 

I loved this card especially when I read the back of it and found out that the card was made from renewable trees and the ink from soya beans. It made my vegetarian heart sing. Problem is, I don’t know whether to keep it or eat it.   

 

The weather is warm and sunny and Hamilton city has become eerily quiet. That is because everyone has left to go to the beach. This town is right in the middle of the North Island and “too far” from the sea. By local standards that it. But the west coast is only a fifty minute drive from my house and the east coast about an hour and a half drive.

 

I am constantly reminded that my homeland is an island. Has this shaped our culture? Damn right it has. New Zealand people have the sea in their bones. To live near it or on it is the goal. To live far from it is to be bereft.    

 

I am in the process of reading books that illustrate the various forms of creative non-fiction that may be of use to me when I begin tutoring for the course that Peter Wells is lecturing for summer school at the University of Waikato. I came across a book called The Ash Range written by the celebrated Australian poet Laurie Duggan. (Pan Books, Melbourne, 1987). The book is an epic story written in prose and poetry about the white settlement of Gippsland, Victoria. The foreword is written by Don Watson. The very first sentence sets the tone. “Until very recently I had not realised that Gippsland was an idea as well as a place.” He goes on to talk about the prominence of snake stories that he heard as a child. “Deep in the Gippsland subconscious there lay a coiled snake. If it had been a Catholic province I believe there would have been an annual festival.”

 

This got me thinking. If we had to choose one symbol that haunts our subconscious it would have to be a waka of some kind; a double-hulled canoe or a sailing ship. We are always on the move, a restless people, a people who have an extremely high percentage of the population with current passports. It is a standing joke that wherever you go in the world, no matter how remote, some @#%$* Kiwi will already be there in jandals and shorts and drinking a steinlager.

 

There is currently a moral panic going on about massive numbers of New Zealand people moving across the Tasman Sea to Australia. It has become a political football, each party blaming the other for the exodus. Waste of time. It is the old pattern repeating itself albeit in a different guise. When questioned about their reasons for leaving, the ‘traitors’ almost always quote economic advantages. It does not matter how many people crunch the numbers to prove that the taxes are higher there and the cost of living in a city like Sydney horrendous, the myth is firmly entrenched.

 

Anyone who strives to ‘get ahead’ (meaning get more affluent) is praised to the skies even when we are in the grip of the total breakdown of the world-wide monetary system. The media is flooded with finger-pointing moralisers who cry Greed Greed Greed! Everybody wants too much, they say, and we are doomed. It is nonsense to put the blame on individuals and groups for being too greedy. We as a society are ear bashed daily about the ‘need for greed’. Witness the current push to make people spend more on Christmas presents to ‘keep the economy going’. Capitalism needs greed and constant growth to stay afloat. Let’s be honest; we praise the self-made person, we are obsessed with the rich and we all dream of winning lotto. Besides, it is impossible to pull out one aspect of capitalism and decry it without seeing it as a moral universe far deeper than the superficial economic arguments for and against the institutions that keep the system afloat.

 

I find the media so tedious at the moment. As we approach New Year all we hear about are the so-called highlights of 2008. This includes the ‘best’ people of the year. Mostly sports heroes of course. To write an article about the worst people of the year would be fun. Any takers?  Who would they be? People like me who don’t own anything and have a substantial sum of money in a bank account that pays no interest? I do this through choice. But guess what, I am seen as a fool to live like this. More than a fool, as one who has somehow let the side down, big time.

 

I am in the process of changing the format of my website. I have had some feedback from readers who have become a little lost in the online writing. From this week on, my blog will be separate from the story of Hannalore. I will continue to post the story on the Page part of the software. If you look at the right hand side of the opening page of my website, you will see a new page titled Hannalore: Part One. This will be a repeat of the story so far with a small addition at the end. This will enable the readers to follow the story as it is written and will be easier to read in chronological order. The novella will be in three parts and with numbered sections as before. I would welcome any feedback on the new format.

 

Blog Number Seven: 13-19 Dec 2008

 

One of the themes that fascinates me as a writer is the constant shifting of identities that we undergo in one lifetime. This has accelerated markedly in the modern age. For the first half of the twentieth century you had your life path laid out before you at birth; rigid, under constant judgment, inflexible. You passed through the stages of child, parent, and aged person and took on the roles and clothing and speech of your group. People who enjoyed these roles thrived within them. My own parents had a long successful marriage lived entirely within the prescribed gender roles of breadwinner and mother.

 

This year I became seventy. I was born in 1938, the third pregnancy in a row for my mother Joan. I spent most of the first decades of my life trying not to ‘be her’. I loved her but I did not want her life.

 

My mother was a wonderful woman who overcame her lack of education (she did not make it to high school) to be someone who developed a deep understanding of how human relationships worked. I am very close to my four siblings, all of us in our sixties and seventies, and I’m sure that I owe this legacy to my mother’s wisdom.

 

I have a clear memory of the very moment when she realised that she had become an old woman. She was seventy-two and was ill with the flu. I was caring for her. She had a mild fever and was lying in her bed. Outside her room a winter’s storm raged. Her left hand was on top of the duvet. All at once she let out a devastating cry: whose hand is that, whose hand?

 

‘Don’t be silly Mum. It’s your own hand.’

‘But it looks old.’

‘That’s because you are old.’

 

A silence. I could have bitten my tongue off. She gave me an anguished look, not of anger, but of fear.  She whispered, How did this happen? I don’t want this…

 

From that moment on, my mother became what some would term a hypochondriac. She kept a strict watch on her bodily ills, both real and imagined, that eventually became dramatic characters in their own right. She kept quite good health until the age of eighty and died at eighty-three, demented, fearful, crying for her own mother, not understanding why she and my father had to live apart in the last eighteen months of her life.

 

Every aging person develops a reassuring identity that creates their final narrative. This may be a stubborn adherence to an identity long gone; in the case of women, a youthful way of dressing from a bygone era (the ubiquitous beehive hairstyle springs to mind) and for men, a sexually desirable person who chats up any woman under thirty, a practice that may earn him the derogatory title of ‘dirty old man’. 

 

I sometimes ask my younger women friends what sort of old woman they want to be. There is usually a shocked response. Like my mother, they simply can’t grasp the fact that they may one day be an old woman. In this time of the rapid rise in the numbers of old people on the planet, the zeitgeist is playing a dangerous game of hide and seek with us. Coming ready or not Boomers! A woman is not permitted to look old. To do so, is seen as letting down the side. Get rid of wrinkles, age spots, flabby chins and above all grey hair. Shove hormonal cream up your vagina (what’s left of it) and keep your g-string on to hide your bald mound. 

 

I am going to stick my neck out here. Old people are not a sexual turn on. Sex is for the young. Sex for life is a cruel commercial slogan. (Please note that I am referring here to heterosexual sex.) Women become invisible to the male gaze at about fifty. It’s great to move around the world as an invisible being; a blessed relief to be honest.

 

Here are some of my resolutions so far on becoming an old woman.

 

I will use the word old. It’s honest. I will not say things like so-and-so is fifty years young.

 

I will not use age specific words like sprightly, querulous, or refer to someone as ‘young for her age’ (whatever the hell that means). 

 

I will not dye my hair or cut my pigtails off. (Why is it that pigtails on an old woman annoys some people? I have been confronted by complete strangers who want to know why I want to look like a school girl.)

 

I will not get plastic surgery or do botox to try and look young.

 

I will not turn into one of those women who try to shock others so that they are seen as moving outside the stereotype of ‘little old lady’.

 

And above all, if I get tired and need a ‘nana nap’ or use a walking stick or anything else that age throws up at me, I will damn well do it. This is because the popular media and every health book you pick up has a recipe for NOT getting old. We see men of ninety running marathons, old women enduring pregnancy and surgical births after having other people’s embryos implanted in their ancient wombs and so on… but these people are exceptions. Most old people have health issues either chronic or acute. Once you hit seventy, your genes (if not your sins) will find you out.

 

What bugs me is that if you do get an illness, it’s seen as your OWN FAULT. If only you had exercised more, if only you had taken omega three or anti-oxidants, if only you had not boozed your brains out when you were a teenager or eaten too much sugar, if only you had kept your knickers on, blah blah blah… 

 

OK. So what’s all this rave got to do with writing? Plenty. A recent article (forgotten where I read it) asked why it is that old men [sic] were still writing novels. Writers like the great Philip Roth were quoted as an example of older male writers honing in on bodily decay as metaphors of social ills…

 

I fail to see the relevance of this critique. Of course a writer changes as his or her life (and the outer world) changes. Anyway, who would want to read work from a writer stuck in one era writing the same book over and over again. Old people make terrific characters in fiction. They are interesting, annoying, dogmatic, clever, whatever you want to make of them. Some writers avoid them like the plague because old people are thought to live (mostly) in the past and are just hanging around waiting to die and this can bore the readers.  

 

OK. Here’s a challenge for writers out there. Write a short piece of fiction from the point-of-view of an old person in the present tense without flash backs. Dare you to.   

 

 

Part Six: The Black Stones of Hannalore

 

Last week, in part five, Hannalore and Juno leave the community settlement with the help of Sarah and Jimmy. Sarah gives Hannalore three photos, two of her lost mother Eleanor and one of the front window of a men’s wear shop that Hannalore has never seen before. She and Juno climb aboard the konaki (bush sledge). Hannalore becomes fearful of Jimmy who begins to behave in a strange manner towards Juno. Jimmy leaves them alone in the bush to repair the konaki and together they run away from him only to lose their way in the bush.

Now read on….  

 

 

10

 

They struggled for hours through thick bush. Hannalore had no idea where they were. She knew that they should try to find a creek and follow it downhill until it joined a larger river, but they seemed to be climbing uphill for most of the time. Although the rain had stopped the trees were still dripping with moisture. The bush was stirring with birds drying off their feathers. A few drowsy bees drifted around looking for nectar. The air smelled fresh and sharp with an aroma that Hannalore recognised as rewarewa, the native honeysuckle. She took this early flowering to be a good omen that warm dry weather was on its way and that soon this wild wet winter would be over.

 

A kereru flapped noisily just above Juno’s head. She shrieked and tripped over a fallen ponga. She cut open her left leg just beneath the knee and shrieked even more loudly when she saw the blood emerging from a rip in her woollen stocking.

 

Hannalore tore the fabric away from the cut. She washed the wound with a handful of precious water from the bottle. She retrieved the package of sandwiches from the pikau and smeared her fingers with honey. She transferred the honey from her fingers to the patch of blood below Juno’s knee. The blood thickened and the bleeding stopped.   

Juno said that she wanted to go home. She hated the bush, she hated the bird that had tried to cut her legs off with its wings. If they had stayed with Jimmy he would have killed it stone dead. 

 

‘Hush now,’ said Hannalore. ‘You must be brave. We still have a long way to go.’

 

Juno announced that she was hungry. Hannalore waited until Juno had eaten some cheese and one of the thick pieces of bread before she suggested that they keep on walking.

Juno was reluctant to move. She said that her feet hurt and she was tired. Out came her lower lip again.

 

Hannalore lifted her pikau onto her back. ‘I’m off then,’ she said. ‘See you later.’ She left Juno lying against the fallen ponga trunk and did not look back. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the girl that this journey was to save her from the clutches of strangers but she knew that it was pointless to try to make Juno understand her vulnerability. Juno had just one version of events, her own. Her world was what she saw from her own eyes and what she heard through her own ears. 

 

Hannalore remembered something that Sarah had said when she passed on the information that the community wanted to get rid of Juno. Be careful not to build your life around another person. To love too much can be the worst sort of tyranny.

 

Hannalore paused to get her breath. Several days ago it had become clear to her that Juno’s expulsion was not the only reason she was leaving the settlement. It had provided the catalyst and the justification for her actions but there were deeper issues at stake. The long period of solitude imposed upon her by the elders had given her time to think about herself. This was against the rules of the community. Selfishness, in all its manifestations, had to be ruthlessly stamped out. 

 

Hannalore heard something rustle in the undergrowth. She and Juno sometimes played hide and seek in the bush.  It could be that Juno was creeping up on her. The undergrowth at the edge of the track was thick with the tangled spiked branches of juvenile matai. Hannalore left the track and crouched behind a tree trunk. She waited to hear Juno reciting the familiar chant, coming ready or not!

 

Something moved behind her. She jumped up and turned around. Facing her was a black and white dog, a border collie. The dog moved slowly towards her with its stomach close to the ground, stalking her. It did not take its eyes off her, almost mesmerising her. She saw two eyes staring up at her, one brown the other a startling blue ringed in black.

 

‘Here boy,’ she said. ‘Here boy, come here.’

 

The dog seemed confused. It stopped in mid track, lowered its eyes and trotted off without making a sound. Hannalore wondered where the dog had come from. She knew all the dogs at the settlement. She had raised some of them from puppies, spoiling them until they were ready to be taken away by the men to be trained into working dogs. 

 

This animal was out of its territory. Unless it was lost, there must be someone who had allowed it to come into the dense bush. The dog would know how to return to his master. Perhaps she could persuade the dog to come back to her and lead her down to cleared ground and to the river bank. She put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. Nothing. She whistled again, more loudly this time. Again, no response.

 

She was not looking forward to another night out in the high country with Juno. As if on cue, she heard Juno calling out to her. ‘Where are you? Where are you?’

 

Hannalore ran back along the track. She found Juno walking along slowly with her head down. Hannalore said she was sorry for leaving her for so long. She asked her where the bed rolls were.

‘Dunno,’ said Juno.

‘You must have left them somewhere. We can go back and find them together.’

‘Jimmy took them.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Never mind. We can find some ferns to make a bed.’

Juno cheered up. ‘Make a bed, make a bed.’

 

They walked on. Hannalore told Juno about the strange dog with one brown eye and one blue eye. Juno claimed to have seen him too. He could not bark so he said hello chickadee to her instead.

 

Towards the end of the afternoon they stumbled upon a track that Hannalore hoped would lead them out of the high country. Much to her relief, it did. They descended a steep hill. The bush thinned out. The ground beneath their feet became wet and swampy. Now, there were cabbage trees and rafts of dense green flax bushes and wading birds rising up in huge flocks into the fading sun.

 

They came upon a creek in flood. Hannalore filled the empty water bottle. The light was deepening. They moved onto higher ground. Juno said she was hungry and tired and that there was a blister on her heel. Hannalore said soon we will eat but first we will make our bivouac for the night.

 

She took a knife from her pikau and slashed some branches from a clump of silver tree-ferns that grew close to an outcrop of rock. A cleft in the rock provided some shelter from the rising south-westerly wind. She unfolded the canvas ground sheet she had taken from Jimmy’s konaki. Her initial idea was to string it up to make a roof but she did not have a cord to pass through the metal eyelets to secure it to the rock. 

 

Juno played with a fern frond turning it round and round from green to silver and back again. Hannalore asked her to put it back on the ground with the others. It was part of their bed for the night. Juno refused. Hannalore felt like shaking her but she knew that she must not show anger or fear in front of Juno. Every decision she made from this moment on would have a direct bearing on whether or not they survived.

 

‘Don’t wanna sleep here,’ said Juno.

‘But you like the silver leaves. Look how they shine.’

‘I want to go to the little house.’

‘We can’t go back. Sarah would be angry with us.’

‘Sarah not here.’

Hannalore gave up trying to reason with Juno. She unwrapped the remains of the bread and the cheese wheel. Juno ate most of it and drank the water bottle dry. Then she announced that she wanted to go to the dunny to do number twos. Where was it?

 

‘You’ll have to use the ground. Go over there behind the rock well away from our shelter,’ said Hannalore. ‘I’ll go back to the creek to get some more water. Stay close, don’t stray.’

 

Juno nodded. Hannalore made her way back to the flooded creek and refilled the bottle. She found a small bush of rangiora half way up the bank and collected some of the leaves for Juno to use as toilet paper. She sat for a while on a flat rock looking down at the rushing water breaking over the sandstone outcrops at the edge of the bank.

 

The task of keeping Juno free from fear and physical harm was greatly magnified out here in the wilderness. Back at the settlement there were always others to share the burden. Perhaps she had been too hasty in stealing this needy and damaged child away. But things could be worse. This creek could lead them into a tributary of the Mokau. Tomorrow at first light she planned to follow the direction of the water and see where it takes them. But first she needed to get both of them through the night.

 

10

 

She hurried back to their shelter through the darkening air. The wind had died down. The cabbage trees had transformed their spiked heads into stark silhouettes against the backdrop of a vivid sunset muddied by black streaks of dissipating rain clouds.

 

She reached the rocky outcrop. The canvas groundsheet and the pikau were gone. Where was Juno? She called to her. There was no reply. She called again, more loudly this time. Again, no answer. She put her fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. The rays of the dying sun slipped down another notch.

 

She sank down onto the fronds of silver fern and put her face in her hands. This was the end. Juno could be drowning nearby in a foul swamp, calling for her, deathly afraid. Or perhaps Jimmy had tracked them down and taken Juno away. This would explain the missing pikau and groundsheet.

 

Something touched her left leg. It was the dog with the odd eyes. He pressed his damp nose once more against her leg. He made no sound. Hannalore grasped his collar. She was determined that the dog was not going to leave her again. She tied her headscarf onto his collar to make a short lead. The dog did not seem to mind and made no effort to get away.  She walked him around the rocky outcrop for a few minutes. She had hoped that he would take her to Juno. ‘Seek,’ she said. ‘Seek, seek.’

 

But he just stared up at her with one luminous blue eye and one dull brown one, docile, obedient, walking when she walked, stopping when she stopped. 

 

Then she saw it; a light shining from within a dense cluster of manuka and cabbage trees in the distance. A flickering light. And that meant human company.

 

She ran, holding onto the short lead on the dog’s collar, almost choking him in the process. He willingly kept pace with her.

 

The light had seemed close at first but the more she ran, the further away the grove of trees seemed to be. Her shoes were heavy with mud and her calf muscles were stricken with cramps. A tremor began to beat inside her chest; tick tick tick. She wondered if she was losing her senses.

 

Then the dog stopped running. He lay flat on the ground and rested his face on his front paws.  Hannalore untied the headscarf from the dog’s collar. ‘Sorry boy,’ she said. ‘You are as lost as I am.’

 

The dog jumped to his feet and set off at a good pace. He ran ahead of Hannalore and when she faltered he waited for her to catch up. Ah, there were the cabbage trees and the manuka and there was the light, stronger now. She did not see the hut at first. It blended in perfectly with the trees that sheltered it. It was a raupo hut, partly demolished, but with most of the walls still intact. And yes, there was a fire burning inside. Wisps of smoke threaded between the gaps in the bundles of nikau palms that formed the low slung roof. A finger of smoke rose from the slab chimney set apart from the back wall. The entrance lay open to the weather, the door long gone. 

 

Juno was inside, sitting on a wooden butter box close to the chimney, holding her hands out to the fire. 

 

‘Who brought you here?’ asked Hannalore.

‘No one,’ said Juno. ‘I seen it for myself.’

 

Hannalore looked around. The hut was old, and did not seem to be inhabited. There was a rectangular gap in the side wall that could have performed the function of a window but there was no glass, just the chewed remnants of a sheet of unbleached calico that someone had tacked over the opening to keep out the wind.

 

‘Rats,’ said Juno. ‘Eat everything.’

 

There was a pile of dry bark and some small logs stacked neatly near the chimney. The pikau and the canvas groundsheet were placed upon the clay floor.  

‘Do you like our little house?’ asked Juno.

‘It’s lovely,’ said Hannalore. ‘You are very clever. How did you light the fire?’

‘I took the swan box from your pikau.’

‘You should have waited for me. That was our last match.’

 

Juno pushed out her lower lip. To distract her, Hannalore drew her attention to the dog lying down at the doorway. Juno patted him and tried to make him enter the hut but he would not. Hannalore said that is yet another proof that he is a working dog, trained to stay outside. ‘Someone must be out looking for him and that comforts me.’

 

Juno smiled. ‘Look, on the shelf.’

‘Food tins?’

‘I put one on the fire. Dunno what’s inside, rat got the label.’

 

Hannalore grabbed two pieces of wood to use as a lever to pluck the tin from the flames. The tin was already bulging, about to explode. Juno laughed. Hannalore waited until the tin was cool and then stabbed it with her knife. A putrid smell like dead fish blew out into their expectant faces. After her initial shock, Juno laughed again. Then she pleaded for something nice to eat. She claimed that her stomach was like an empty paper bag with teeth and that it had started to eat itself. 

 

Hannalore took a flannel from the pikau and moistened a corner with a little water. She wiped Juno’s face and hands. She explained that there was just half a piece of bread left. It must not be eaten tonight. They would share it in the morning.

 

Juno yawned. She said that she could not stay awake. Hannalore made a nest for her out of the canvas ground sheet. The dirt floor in the centre of the hut was hard and shiny unlike the damp sections at the sides of the hut. But Juno did not want to go to sleep in the middle of the floor. She said that things can walk around her and when the fire goes out it will be too dark to see the old people standing at the end of her bed. Hannalore promised that she would try to keep the fire burning all night. Juno grumbled a little longer but soon her eyes closed and she fell into a deep sleep.

 

Hannalore slept fitfully throughout the long night. She was vaguely aware of a passing storm that dumped a copious amount of rain on their shelter. She was surprised at how dry the floor was in spite of the open doorway and the holes in the roof. Once she heard something or someone howling mournfully through the trees. This thing seemed to call her name but in the end she decided that it was just the wind. She awoke stiff and cold and hungry. Her ankles were swollen. The fire had almost died down. She fed the embers with some dried bark and some of the smaller pieces of wood. Soon, small red and yellow flames licked around the edges of the logs. She held out her hands to the warmth and felt a flicker of life move up into her arms. 

 

She hobbled outside the raupo hut to find a place where she could pass water without disturbing the still sleeping Juno. The wind had died down taking the rain with it. The dawn light filtered through a thin mist that shrouded the tops of the cabbage trees. The silence hummed. She crouched underneath a clump of manuka. The hot urine splashed against the inside of her thighs.

 

The smoke from the fire drifted slowly upwards from the top of the slab chimney. There was no sign of the blue-eyed dog. Hannalore wiped herself with her headscarf. She wondered what Sarah would think if she could see her doing this. She tied the damp cloth to the manuka as a token of her presence here, or perhaps to leave a message. 

 

She did not know what to do. She did not want to spend another day walking. Both she and Juno needed to rest. They had little food left and after the experience with the rotten fish the night before she was not pinning her hopes on finding anything edible in the remaining tins. 

 

She went back into the hut and put some more wood on the fire. Juno awoke and began asking for food. Hannalore told her that she thought it best that they stay here for one more day and one more night so that they could rest. Then they would follow the river to find some houses and people who would feed them. Juno said that she wanted to leave right now; she had liked the little house yesterday but not today.

 

Hannalore opened her pikau to retrieve the last piece of bread. All that was left was a chewed piece of brown paper and some fresh rodent droppings.

 

‘The rats, the rats, the rats,’ said Juno.

‘I forgot all about them.’

‘I want my breakfast.’

‘There’s no bread left.’

‘I’ll have porridge then.’    

 

It took all of Hannalore’s strength not to break down. She had been deluding herself. What on earth had possessed her to believe that she could care for Juno all on her own? Sometimes she felt more like a child of five than a grown woman. We are truly sisters, she thought. Others have always decided what I should do and say and be. The same thing has happened to her. I don’t know if this can ever be undone.

 

‘You have persuaded me that we should leave today,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I’m hungry.’

 ‘I’ll find some porridge for you.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

Sixth Week: 6-12 December 2008

 

One of the joys (or horrors) of writing online in draft form is that the book becomes a shape shifter that is made available to readers while still in a fluid state. This happens with all forms of writing but is made visible as a process when you write directly onto the internet. At this particular moment I have changed my mind yet again about the structure and time frame of the book. But I don’t care. The truth is that I have fallen in love with online writing. I feel rejuvenated, alive, creative, and above all free.

 

I had not realised how weary I had become with my old way of writing fiction; the loneliness, the uncertainty, the lack of energy to go back day after day (sometimes for years) to revisit a world lived entirely within my own imagination. What other occupation requires a person to live like this without any feedback until the job is finished, published, done and dusted and then thrown out to the circling sharks (aka book reviewers)?

 

Not only have I fallen in love with the online process I have also become enamoured with the possibility of the retrieval of an earlier fictional form that is currently out of favour: the novella. The novella was once an important form in nineteenth century German literature and often had a rigid structure with strict narrative rules. This is no longer the case except for the necessity of creating an intense gaze upon one major theme.

 

A novella is not a short novel written by a novelist who ran out of ideas. It is not an extended short story. It is what it is; a slippery customer that I am just coming to grips with. It is not the word count that is the crucial factor although novellas are usually shorter than novels. This annoys some contemporary publishers who see novellas as having little commercial value. In novellas, character, incident, theme and language are focussed on one issue of universal significance. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann is a wonderful example of a writer using the novella form to portray a story of love, death and obsession and the tragedy of the loss of identity and hope through the aging process. I wonder how different his book would be if he had written a full length novel. I believe that the intensity of emotion and drama would have become seriously watered down.    

 

I might end up writing three novellas, the first one being my current work The Black Stones of Hannalore (working title). Each novella will be set within the same landscapes of the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The time frame will be just after the end of the First World War, then moving to 1946 for the second book, and the last one being in the near future, about 2020. This means that I won’t be able to have the same characters in all the books but they can be linked together by descent. This is not a problem because it is the themes and the landscapes (and in particular domestic landscapes) that will remain constant throughout.  

 

None of the above is set in concrete. Meanwhile, I tend my summer garden and tie up the tomatoes that are threatening to outgrow their cages. I have two deep wooden boxes filled with organic compost on my front lawn and green plastic bags bursting with potatoes down the back. When the writing stalls, I go outside and pluck the laterals from the Beefsteak and the Money Maker and smell the distinctive aroma of crushed tomato leaves on my fingers. This brings me back to earth with a jolt. Growing vegetables is similar to writing fiction: you start from a tiny seed and the narrative develops from that. The story ends (hopefully) in a feast.  

 

 

Part Five: The Black Stones of Hannalore

 

In the last episode, we learned that that Juno’s position in the community may be under threat. Hannalore is released from interment so that she can take control of Juno’s increasingly strange behaviour. Hannalore tells Juno that they are leaving the religious community soon. She swears her to secrecy. Now read on…

 

Two nights after the scene in the kitchen Hannalore was awakened by something blowing softly into her left ear. At first she thought that a flapping moth had taken up residence inside her head but then she heard a faint whisper. ‘Wake up, wake up.’ It was Sarah.

 

‘Has something happened to Juno?’

‘No, she’s sound asleep.’

‘Can’t this wait until the morning? I’m tired.’

‘Sorry,’ said Sarah. ‘But I need to speak with you urgently.’ 

 

Heavy rain was falling. The howling wind performed a series of suspended cadences that never quite developed into a decisive final note. Hannalore crept out of the hut and followed Sarah to the kitchen. 

    

Sarah raked the glowing embers in the fire box with the poker. She put some small logs onto the embers and the dry bark on the wood flared up with a hissing sound. She filled the teapot with boiling water from the tap at the side of the range and brought out the milk jug and the jar of sugar from the safe. 

 

‘I know that you are leaving,’ she said.

 

Hannalore took a gulp of hot tea that almost burnt her gullet. It had been a mistake to trust Juno. She did not understand the necessity for secrecy. The girl had no guile, no artifice and she trusted all adults implicitly.

 

Hannalore decided to bluff it out. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘For what it’s worth, I believe that you’re doing the right thing. I have worked out a plan. I’ve borrowed bed rolls and a pikau for you to take. But you must be careful. Winter time is dangerous in the bush.’

‘Thank you,’ said Hannalore. ‘But why are you taking such a risk?’

 

Sarah poured more tea into her cup. ‘I have not always been kind to you and Juno and I wish to make amends. You must leave as soon as possible. A man and a lady are coming from the orphanage when the weather clears to take Juno away.’ She went over to the sideboard and retrieved a stained manila envelope from the back of the cupboard. ‘Photographs,’ she said. ‘You will need to take them with you.’ She laid out three photographs on the table and placed the candle closer to Hannalore.

 

One photograph was of a shop window displaying men’s clothing. The second one was of a young woman dressed in a satin gown with an intricate pleated bodice and the last one was the same woman, a little older, holding a baby dressed in a sailor suit.

 

‘Eleanor,’ said Hannalore. ‘God help me, it’s Eleanor.’

‘And you, in the sailor suit, dressed as a boy.’

 

Hannalore could not take her eyes off the face of her young mother dressed in her satin finery. She was beautiful. The iridescent perfection of her skin glowed through the matt sepia surface with the lustre of pearls.    

 

Sarah complained of feeling faint. She fetched a pillow and propped herself up on the settle. Hannalore offered her another cup of tea. Sarah shook her head.

 

Someone knocked on the kitchen door. Hannalore ignored it at first. It was barely audible above the raging wind playing havoc with a flapping sheet of tin on the roof. The knocking became more insistent. Hannalore placed the photographs back into the manila envelope and hid it beneath her night shirt but before she could blow out the candle, the kitchen door opened.

 

It was Jimmy. He was dressed in dripping wet oilskins and leather boots. He stood in the doorway awkwardly with his sodden hat in his hands. 

 

‘Take off your boots and come close to the fire,’ said Sarah. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

‘It’s a filthy night outside,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should wait a little longer.’

 

Sarah said that she had just suffered one of her turns and that she must keep still for a few moments until the blood came back into her face. Hannalore asked him what he was doing here.

 

‘Enough,’ said Sarah, ‘let’s get down to business. Jimmy is part of my plan for your escape. He will take you and Juno to the edge of the bush before first light. He will show you how to follow the river to where you are headed. You are going to Piopio.’

‘Time for me to go and catch Prince and prepare the konaki,’ said Jimmy.

‘We should go and wake Juno soon,’ said Sarah. ‘I will help to pack her things.’ 

 

Hannalore waited until Jimmy had closed the kitchen door behind him before she removed the photographs from her night shirt. She took them out of the envelope and laid them out on the table. The young woman was looking down at the baby in the sailor suit with a look of utter adoration. The baby could not be, was not, an image of Hannalore when young. To be so loved and then abandoned made no sense.

 

Sarah looked shrunken and somehow diminished in the flickering candlelight. She offered Hannalore some waterproof wrapping to protect the photographs from the rain.

‘I should have given you these images a long time ago,’ she said, ‘but I was afraid that you would find them unsettling.’

 

Outside, the storm-driven rain roared like an inland tidal sea. Hannalore thought she heard Sarah whisper, please forgive me but it might have been the desperate sigh of a tree fern being uprooted from the sodden ground or some drowning animal fighting for a final gasp of air against the power of the storm.

 

Sarah stood up. ‘Come now,’ she said. ‘My head has settled. It’s time to leave.’

 

9

 

The konaki proved to be a problem right from the start. Jimmy said little but when he did he surprised her with the coarseness of his language. Some blankety-blank idiot had attached two small wheels to the back of the sledge and they kept getting caught in the low branches of the bush along the track. He rode slowly and cautiously, but every so often he had to dismount from Prince and chop at the vegetation caught in the wheels with his pig knife. He had to shout over the noise of the wind and the rain and the flailing trees. Another blankety-blank idiot had not put runners on the konaki and if he, Jimmy, ever met this person, he would tell him to go to the hot place.

 

By the time the dawn light appeared the rain had reduced to a dribble and the wind had died down to a mere whisper of its former self. Hannalore marvelled at Juno’s ability to sleep through the severe jolting of their transportation through the terrible night. But as soon as they stopped, Juno awoke. She sat encased in her blankets with her head scarf pulled down low over her forehead. 

 

Jimmy removed the horse from the shafts of the konaki. Juno slid down the front of the sledge onto the ground. She giggled.

 

Hannalore was annoyed. Jimmy could at least have lifted Juno out of the konaki before he released his horse. She could have hurt herself.

 

Jimmy tied on a canvas feedbag over Prince’s head. The horse snuffled and coughed into his oats. Jimmy said that he would light a fire to make tea and dry out their things. He took some shredded bark and small pieces of paper from his pikau. He fiddled about trying to make sparks with a stick of hardwood and a piece of whitey-wood but the dampness defeated him. 

 

Hannalore gave him one of her precious matches. He asked her where she had got it from but she would not tell him. Jimmy said it was a shame that Hannalore had never learned to ride a horse. He could have saddled up one for her and Juno and then they would not be at the mercy of this wretched konaki.

 

‘Do you know where we are?’ he asked.

 

She shook her head. The paper caught fire and she helped Jimmy to place small pieces of bark in a pyramid shape to feed the flames. Soon, the fire was well alight and when it had died down Jimmy made a flat area in the middle of the embers to make a nest for the billy. When the water boiled, he lifted the billy out of the fire and placed it on the ground. He removed the lid and threw in a handful of tea. He gave it a vigorous stir with his pig knife.

 

‘Now we must wait for it to steep,’ he said. ‘Nothing worser than rushed bush tea.’

 

‘I’m hungry,’ said Juno. Hannalore opened her pikau and unwrapped a brown paper parcel. Inside were two honey sandwiches, four slices of thick unbuttered bread and a small wheel of cheese. She offered a slice of bread to Jimmy. He shook his head and beckoned to Juno. ‘Got pork hocks in me saddlebag. Come over here and get some meat.’ 

 

Juno came closer to the fire. Hannalore felt uneasy, not at what Jimmy had said but the tone of his voice. He kept staring at Juno’s face as if he had never seen her before. He tipped up the billy and poured strong dark tea into chipped enamel mugs. Juno wolfed down the chunks of fatty meat and gristle that Jimmy hacked from one of the hocks. She wanted to know how the pig walked after someone took its legs away.

 

Jimmy laughed. ‘Oh aren’t you the funny one, a breath of fresh air you are.’

 

Hannalore’s unease deepened. She had known Jimmy since she came to the settlement with Juno and Eleanor. He was a few years older than her and had always seemed a quiet young man, respectful of his uncle Abraham and the other elders. He was gentle with the farm animals and, unlike some of the other men, never whipped his dog or kicked the house cows. 

 

Now, it seemed as if he was playing a different game. He had taken on an air of authority over them, an ownership. Hannalore wondered why he was helping them when he knew of the possible consequences of his action.

 

The bush was wet and dripping with moisture. The horse had dozed off with his feedbag still attached to his head. Jimmy put some more fuel on the fire.

‘Time is moving on,’ said Hannalore. ‘Perhaps we should resume our journey.’

‘Soon,’ said Jimmy. Then he told them a story of a boy and a girl who fell in love and who had run away from the settlement. They had become lost in the bush.  

‘Were they punished?’

‘They died of cold and hunger. But their ghosts live on in the bush. Listen, can you hear what they are doing?’

 

Hannalore saw a look of panic on Juno’s face at the mention of ghosts. ‘Come Juno,’ she said. ‘Help me pack up the food.’

 

Jimmy made a circle of his left index finger and thumb and jabbed his other index finger up and down inside the circle.

 

Hannalore hoped that Juno had not seen this sickening gesture. Jimmy jumped to his feet and said that he was not prepared to risk his horse by going any further. Those blankety-blank wheels on the konaki had to go. 

 

Hannalore was afraid. Without transport, she and Juno were in danger of becoming trapped here. There were entirely at Jimmy’s mercy. His behaviour was becoming more disquieting by the minute. She did not believe the story about the dead lovers. The women in the settlement would have known about it and told the story over and over again. Stories of love and loss were their favourite tales especially when the characters broke the rules and were punished for it by an ever vigilant God.  

 

Juno drained her mug. ‘Can’t read my tea leaves,’ she said. ‘Too many.’

‘Wait here,’ said Jimmy. ‘I need to go into the gulley below and cut some totara.’

‘What for?’ asked Hannalore.

‘Makeshift runners,’ said Jimmy. ‘Those wheels have to go.’

 

Hannalore took Juno’s mug and saw a tangle of dark brown tea leaves clinging to the sides. ‘Bunches of grapes,’ she said. ‘Luscious fruit and an important journey.’

‘I want the grapes now,’ said Juno. ‘Sweet in my mouth.’

Hannalore could hear Jimmy thrashing about below them and then the rhythmic chopping of his axe. ‘We have to go now,’ she whispered. ‘You fold the bed rolls and I’ll pack the pikau.’

Juno pushed out her lower lip. This was her signal that she did not want to do what Hannalore asked of her. 

‘We must leave here,’ said Hannalore.

Juno pushed her bottom lip out even further. 

 

The sound of chopping stopped. Hannalore, feeling more and more certain that they were in danger, told Juno that there were ghosts here, dangerous ones with little red eyes.

Juno sprang to her feet and followed Hannalore’s instructions to fold up the bed rolls. Hannalore grabbed a water bottle and a canvas ground sheet from the konaki. She untied the horse’s halter and smacked him lightly on the rump. Prince did not run away as she had planned. He stood there blinking at her in the morning light. She tried once more but again he just looked at her and blew air through his nostrils and stamped his white feathered feet up and down, up and down.

 

Hannalore and Juno walked away as quietly as they could. Hannalore turned for one last look at Prince and saw him toss his big head sideways, as if to say goodbye.

‘Are the red eyes gone?’ asked Juno.

‘We will soon be safe.’

‘Cross your heart?’

‘Da da da and hope to die.’

 

Fifth Week: 29^th November to 5^th December 2008

 

A busy week. Many phone calls from members of my extended family organising the holidays. I am staying put in spite of the warm weather, the time when New Zealand people head to the beach. My ancestors on my father’s side arrived here in 1840 and spent their Christmas days acting out the customs that they brought down from England. One would think that this practice is long gone. But no. Christmas down under is still linked to the images of snow and sledges and reindeer. This is reflected in the tree decorations and in Christmas cards and the wrapping paper. Then there’s the heavy food. We celebrate Christmas in the heat of mid-day, and resolutely chew our way through baked Christmas dinners and lumpy steamed puddings drowned in hot yellow custard and we drink sweet sherry and eat nasty little mince pies and then collapse into a coma or have a heart attack.

 

I remember trying to explain this phenomenon of misplaced cultural practice to a group of German writers in a seminar that I ran in Berlin four years ago. They fell about laughing when I told them that in New Zealand some people buy spray cans of fake snow to write Happy Christmas on their front windows.  

 

Just over a month has passed since I began to write this blog and I have re-discovered the wonderful effect of a deadline. I made a commitment to myself to post the next episode of my novella each Friday and this stops me falling into the “I’ll do some writing after I’ve done everything else first” syndrome. Another good thing is that I can get out of taking responsibility for some of the grosser aspects of Christmas by pleading time constraints.

 

I am searching for a title for Hannalore’s story. Although it will make little sense to my readers so far, I had thought of calling it The Black Stones of Hannalore. Early days yet. But any suggestions would be welcome. At this stage, I am almost sure that this novella will be the first of three set in the same landscape and with a time frame of over one hundred years. A journey from a raupo hut to cyberspace and Google Earth.

 

A highlight of the past week was the book launch of Hamilton writer Stephanie Hills’s first novel Argenta. (Scholastic, Auckland: 2008). Stephanie is a long time member of a writing group that I have been associated with for over ten years. We meet once a month and discuss current individual projects that we are involved in and generally discuss the act and art of writing in all its manifestations. We are all currently involved with writing projects and have all been published in one form or another.  This group works well for several reasons; there is no obligation to bring any work to be discussed. One can sit and listen month after month if that is what the writer needs at the time. Work is brought to the group to identify problems as outlined by the writer. For example, at our final meeting for the year, one of the writers brought a few pages of the novel she is working on for the group to critique. She was having a problem moving between the present and the past tense when using the first person pronoun (the ‘I’ voice) as the story teller. A lively debate ensued about the problems of moving from one tense to another and the different ‘voice’ that comes with each tense.

 

There are many of these informal writing groups around the country now. They serve a useful purpose in providing a place in the community where writers can gain experience from others and learn how to edit their own work. Anyone reading this who feels isolated as a writer should perhaps think about forming a group. An ideal number would be between six and eight members. And try to have writers from different genres if possible. Our group covers poetry, junior fiction, novels, short stories, memoir, film scripts and (last but not least) a horticultural writer specialising in roses.

 

Now back to the story of Hannalore. In the last episode, Hannalore was sentenced to a form of punishment sometimes referred to as ‘social death’. In today’s episode, Hannalore is released early due to the deterioration in Juno’s behaviour. Sarah gives Hannalore some disturbing news. Now read on…

 

Part Five:  

 

Six days before Hannalore’s period of interment was due to finish, Sarah came early with the plate of bread and honey. She looked exhausted. Her headscarf was loosely tied allowing strands of wispy grey hair to fall about her furrowed face and neck. She brought the news that Hannalore was to be released at once. She had held a meeting with the other women last night about Juno and this morning, the elders had given Hannalore permission to resume her normal life.

 

‘Is Juno ill?’

‘She has not spoken a word since you were sentenced. All she does is sit and rock and yesterday she began to bang her head against the kitchen door.’

‘I must go to her.’

‘Eat first, that was the instruction.’

 

Hannalore bolted down her bread. She barely noticed the cup of tea that Sarah had brought for her. She poured some water from her jug into the washbowl and threw handfuls of cold water over her face. She went to her shelf and unfolded her clothes and dressed with haste; woollen leggings, cotton camisole, long skirt, blouse, calico coverall.  

 

‘I tried to stop her,’ said Sarah, ‘but she would not listen to me.’

‘It only makes things worse to argue with her, you know that.’

 

Sarah’s face crumpled. Hannalore felt a moment of compassion for her. When Sarah had lost her son Harry two years ago in the influenza epidemic she had turned almost overnight into a frail old woman. Her flesh seemed to melt away and her bones became clearly visible beneath her skin. She had fallen back into the interior of her body as if she no longer had a right to live there.

 

Hannalore was not able to comfort her. It was all she could do to stay upright. Her legs had weakened since she had been forced to be idle. There was something else taking over her body; a growing feeling of resentment. She could feel it beginning to invade her blood and bones like a slow but insistent poison. Why was it that both she and Juno were being punished? What had she done? She had obeyed the rules of the community to the letter. She had saved a stranger from drowning. And now the others were asking for her help to pacify Juno.

 

‘I’m ready,’ said Hannalore.

‘Put on your headscarf,’ said Sarah. ‘Don’t make any more trouble for yourself.’

 

7

 

Juno was in the small room at the back of the meeting hut that was designated as a sick bay, a place where ill people could be segregated from the healthy workers. The two iron hospital beds were empty. A small white cupboard between the beds concealed a commode. A shelf holding a collection of medicines was attached to the wall. Bottles of zinc sulphate, quinine, aspirin and friar’s balsam stood in neat rows. Lumps of camphor sewn into muslin bags hanging from hooks above the shelf provided a pungent medicinal aroma to the spartan room. 

 

Juno was standing between the beds. Her brown eyes were small and deep like the glass eyes on a child’s soft toy. Her body quivered. She looked ready to run away at a moment’s notice.

 

‘I have brought Hannalore to you,’ said Sarah.

Juno did not respond.

‘Maybe it would be better if we went out into the bush,’ said Hannalore.

‘The wind has turned,’ said Sarah. ‘Heavy rain will soon be upon us.’

‘We could go to the kitchen and sit on the settle out of the way of the workers.’ 

‘No,’ said Sarah. ‘Juno has spoken bad words there and abused the food. Augusta said it’s enough to sour the milk.’

‘I could feed her,’ said Hannalore. ‘She will take sustenance from me.’

‘I shouldn’t be telling you this but there’s a move underway to get rid of her.’

 

Hannalore was shocked. She hoped that Juno had not heard what Sarah had said. Juno’s eyes still held that floating gaze, empty and unfocussed, as if she could not see what was right in front of her face but that did not mean that she could not hear. 

 

Sarah lowered her voice. ‘We can no longer afford to keep her. There is talk of sending her to an orphanage in town.’

 

Juno gave a strange cry and fell to the floor. Hannalore crouched down and held her in her arms. Juno began to bang her head against the wooden floor.

 

Thump! Thump! Thump!

 

Hannalore tried to hold Juno’s head upright but the child resisted her. Hannalore cried out to Sarah but the old woman had gone.

 

Thump! Thump! Thump!

 

Hannalore had never seen Juno like this before. She did not know what to do. All she could think of was to hum a tune. A ballad she had once heard swam up into her mind. She had forgotten the words so she sang the melody to the nonsense sounds of da da da… da da da…

 

Juno stopped banging her head. She garbled something to Hannalore about a terrible noise of coughing, a child gasping for breath. She could see other bad things too; a man’s back covered with black spots and a lady with blood running from her nose, down her front, all over her blouse.  

 

Hannalore sang da da da again to Juno. She stroked Juno’s cheeks and told her not to be afraid. ‘Pay no attention to those shades. Snap! Snap your fingers like I taught you to do, walk backwards around a circle, throw salt, anything to put them in their place.’

 

The room darkened, and soon the rain was pinging off the iron roof like gun shots. Juno asked for a candle. She smiled with delight when Hannalore opened the little cupboard between the beds and brought out the stub of a candle and a box of wax vestas from behind the commode. On the cover of the matchbox was a white swan. Inside the box were three matches. Hannalore gave one to Juno. She tried to light it by striking the match on the wooden door of the cupboard. Hannalore suggested she try it on the sole of her shoe. Juno gave a cry of joy when the match flared up.

 

‘Quickly,’ said Hannalore. ‘Let’s throw some light around.’

 

The candle stub hissed and burned. Juno asked if she could have another match to light with her shoe. Hannalore said no. There were just two left in the box.  They had to be saved for something more important. Juno asked if she could have the swan box when it was empty.

 

‘Of course,’ said Hannalore. ‘But first you have to be very brave.’

Juno nodded.

‘And you have to promise me that you can keep a really big secret.’

Juno nodded again.

‘We are going away, just you and me.’

Juno clapped her hands. ‘A holiday!’

‘Something like that,’ said Hannalore. ‘But no one else must find out.’

‘Can you sing the da da song again?’

‘Not now. ‘We are going to the kitchen to have something to eat.’     

 

She placed the box of swan vestas and a bottle of aspirin into her coverall pocket. She unhooked a camphor bag from the wall and hung it beneath Juno’s camisole to keep her safe from harm. The candle stub spluttered out. 

 

They came out of the sick bay. There was no one in the meeting room. They ran hand in hand to the kitchen porch that provided some shelter against the driving rain. Hannalore’s legs ached with the unaccustomed movement. She knew then that she must lie low for a few days in order to regain her strength for the journey ahead.  

 

Hannalore opened the kitchen door. Augusta was turning out a loaf onto a wire cooling rack. There was a delicious smell of hot bread.

 

Sarah was stirring a soup pot on the coal range. ‘Two drowned rats,’ she said.  

‘Sorry,’ said Hannalore.

‘Dripping all over my clean floor,’ said Augusta.

‘Sorry,’ repeated Hannalore.

‘You will be, if you don’t keep that wretched child under control.’

 

Sarah replaced the lid on the soup pot. She unwound the rope that held the clothesline securely in place and lowered it down from the roof. She plucked a threadbare towel from the pulley and helped Juno to dry her face and hair.

 

Augusta was knocking down the dough for the next batch of bread. She hit the dough with the side of her hand until it was almost flat then folded it up into smaller rectangles before knocking it down again. Thump! Thump! Thump!

 

The sound made Hannalore nervous.

 

Juno emerged from Sarah’s vigorous rubbing with the towel. Her cheeks were flushed with heat and her eyes glittered. ‘Not allowed to tell,’ she said. Augusta’s busy hands stopped in mid air above the dough.

 

‘It’s just an old tune without words,’ said Hannalore. ‘I told her to keep it a secret.’ 

‘Da da da,’ sang Juno.

 

Augusta resumed torturing her dough. Sarah shook out the damp towel and hung it back on the line. She placed two bowls on the table and filled them with potato and mutton broth. She took a serrated knife and hacked two slices from the hot loaf.

 

‘I need to make sandwiches for the men’s lunches from that,’ said Augusta. ‘Look how you’ve shredded it.’

 

Hannalore was hungry. She wolfed down the hot meaty soup, almost scalding her throat in the process. Juno ate more slowly, pausing now and then to repeat Augusta’s words you’ve shredded it, shredded it, shredded it… until Augusta threw her arms up into the air and walked out of the door saying that she’d had enough, it was more than a body could bear.

 

Sarah took over the bread making. She rolled some dough into thin strips and plaited them together to make a decoration for her loaves. Juno asked her if she could make a little loaf. Sarah gave her some dough, a rolling pin, and a tin with holes in the lid to dust the pastry board with flour. Juno soon became engrossed in her task.

 

‘Look at her,’ said Hannalore. ‘It takes so little to keep her happy. The orphanage would break her heart. And mine.’

‘We can’t carry a non-productive member no matter how much it grieves us.’

‘Juno is capable of doing domestic work if someone is there to guide her,

‘There is some resentment against her,’ said Sarah.

‘Why?’

‘For not dying in the flu epidemic when the normal ones did.’

 

Hannalore was shocked into silence. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Sarah if she felt like that over the loss of her son Harry. Sarah opened the oven door and turned the loaves so that the crusts would brown evenly. She mumbled something about having to accept God’s will, like it or not.

 

Juno had made a mess. The table and the floor were sprinkled with flour. The dough that she had tried to make into a plaited loaf was blackened from constant kneading with her grubby fingers. She asked if her little loaf could go into the oven after the big ones were cooked.

 

‘Of course,’ said Hannalore. ‘And then you can eat it while it’s hot.’

‘It’s filthy,’ said Sarah. ‘Fit only for the pig bucket.’

Hannalore placed her spoon carefully into her empty soup bowl. She managed to anchor her rage deep within her body.   

‘Pig bucket pig bucket,’ cried Juno.

‘No,’ said Hannalore. ‘We will smother the little loaf in melted butter and eat it together.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’