ROSIE AND I

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 459, 9 April 1948, Page 16

ROSIE AND I

iC Written for "The Listener" by

G. R.

GILBERT

again, trying to forget one of ~~ the best: pals a man ever had. She was a great old girl, Rosie was, never a cross word, never an angry look or an inconsiderate action, But that’s all over now, and here I am back in the city trying to forget her among the noise and bustle, It’s rather strange that I should end up in the city again because I first went to the lighthouse to, get away from it. I'd had enough of humanity. I didn’t like the smell of them, or the look of them, or the sound of them. They got in my way all the time. Solitude was what I wanted, and I found it at Wairemu Point all right. The nearest farm was 10 miles away, and most of the distance was measured along the beach) when the tide was out-when the tide was in you couldn’t measure it. All the stores were brought in by launch and landed on a nasty little beach with a peach of a backwash that made the shingle crawl. It was an automatic light at Wairemu, needing only a single keeper to look after it. From my angle the set-up was perfect-the, sea on two sides, and 12 miles away from interference. Here, I thought, is the very thing for a man who wants to be alone. L The keeper I was relieving was glad to get out. "Wait till you’ve been here a couple of years," he said. "You start hearing things out in the scrub. You start carrying a waddy around with you just in case. I guess I’m getting out just in time ..,. Another six months and I’d be taken out." He showed me around while his gear was being loaded on to the lighthouse supply ship. There was the white cottage, and the light and the generators. The cow-bail and the fowl-yard and a small miserable patch of garden that did its best in competition with the spray-laden south-easters, He grumbled about the — garden. "Won’t grow anything except beetroot," he said. "Salt burns everything else down to the ground-and beneath it even..." He meditated. ~ "I’ve seen the wind bring spray up that gully so thick that you couldn’t see more than 20 yards, and the next morning the salt’d be on the panes of the light like hoar frost." He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up at the cloudy sky. "Might be coming up for a blow now, even," he observed. "Well-I won’t be here for it this time, thank God." And off he went. ite back working in the city I WAS left alone with nine hens, and "a cow that I had bought for seven pounds ten. "You can have them chickens," he had said. "Most of them. are well past their prime, anyway."

They looked it-one or two of them were so far gone that they had to eat sitting down. That evening I took the milk-bucket down off the nail and went off to round up the cow. "You don’t want to worry about the bail," he had said, "it faces the wrong way-right into the wind. The south-wester’ll blow the milk out of the bucket as fast as you can get it in. The roof isn’t too sound either. But the old girl’s as quiet as a lamb. You can milk her anywhere." I found the old girl in a nice sheltered spot down at the back of the light. She was lying down and quietly chewing her cud. When she saw me she obligingly got to her feet. She was an old cow all right-the ex-keeper had said something to the effect that it was believed that she had been put ashore by Captain Cook. Listening to her get up I could give full credit to that story; she creaked like a slat-bed under the weight of a’ sergeant-major. Once up she. didn’t exactly sway on her feet, but she looked as ‘though she’d like to lie down again. Besides being the oldest cow I had ever seen, she was also the largest, when I got down beside her it was like milking the side of a house. But even at that early stage in our acquaintance we got along well, for she never moved, although there were strange, and not too expert, hands milking her. That was my introduction to Rosieafterwards we met twice a day regularly, wet or fine, and slowly our acquaintance ripened into friendship. Not long after I began to realise that a man needs somebody or something to talk to-I began finding myself muttering as I worked about the house or in the tower. I decided that I needed a partner in this business, even although he were only a sleeping one. I wouldn’t talk to the hens-talking to those hens would be worse than talking to myself, and besides, they were well on the way to extinction. So there was only old Rosie. I got into the way of having long chats with her while I was milking, and afterwards as I scratched her ears. At first Rosie merely maintained her dignified bearing, standing firmly on her four large splay feet’ in their white socks, twitching her brown ears as she chewed. I discussed many things with Rosie-the state of the weather, the wind, the state of civilisation. Often I would merely discuss my own state.

Sometimes I would admiringly enlarge on Rosie’s strange resemblance, full face, to Rex Harrison. And although Rosie maintained a scrupulous silence, I could sense that she was warming towards me. * * * T was a little later on that I began to sing to Rosie as I was milking. I dida lot of singing while I was at Wairemu Point. I found that it made a pleasant contrast to the silence-I loved the silence so much that I wanted to make a noise occasionally so that the silence would seem more quiet afterwards. It was also a matter of happiness. I was happy, so I sang. Anyway, one evening I began to sing to Rosie-my repertoire included such favourites as Daisy Bell, If You Were the Only Girl in the World, and one or two celebrated New Zealand folk-songs that I don’t think will ever see the printed page. Rosie seemed interested. At Jeast she kept her ears pricked back to see where the row was coming from. And then one milking-time I finished singing I Like You Very Much Carmen Miranda fashion in a high falsetto, but mooing’ instead of using the words which I didn’t know, and I asked Rosie if she liked it. And I’ll swear that the old cow nodded. At least she lowered her head, and it looked like as good a nod as I’ve ever seen. After that I took ‘to singing more than ever. But you know how it is when you have a great regard for someone-it brings its own responsibilities and worries. I began to worry about Rosie being out when the south-wester was belting up the gully blowing the ‘salt rain before it. When it was cold and I sat before a fire I hoped that Rosie was in a good snug spot, and when, after a dry spell, the paddock was brown and dead, I worried as to whether she was hungry and thirsty on a diet of salt-encrusted dry grass stalks. I was very concerned when Rosie bellowed for her lover across the barbedwire fence, and let her through the gate into the run where the neighb farmer kept a bull with his store « I was upset when she returned the next morning in a miserable condition with one horn torn off in a fight with a few of her sisters, and the embryo horn that was left looking tender, and streaming

slood-a mishap that left her looking nore rakish than ever. Our friendship was not all beer and skittles, though. On many occasions I had to get out of bed and heave a rock at her as she munched the hedge that grew outside my bedroom window. I didn’t:mind the hedge slowly disappearing so much, that would probably grow again, but Rosie, chewing and snorting, was like a _ concrete-mixer playing a serenade. Rosie never bore me any grudge for the rocks I threw. She would always be her usual quiet, creaky self at milk-ing-time. Once, though, when ‘the flies were getting on her nerves a bit, and she was jigging about and flicking her stock-whip of a tail into my face, she stood on my foot. That was a very memorable occasion, two toenails ‘were .taken off and one toe was flattened for good by her great hoof. I yelled blue murder and then thumped her with my free foot. Rosie slowly turned her calm, slightly mournful eyes on to me. I continued to yell and thump = and slowly Rosie turned her head away as though puzzled that I should act so strangely, but determined to make allowances. Then, absently, she moved her hoof and I hobbled away to sit down and tenderly clasp my injuries. But our regard for each other never faltered, Rose was an ideal companion. She was a good listener, she was never late for an appointment; always pleasant and agreeable, she never lost her temper, was never jealous, and she had a quiet sense of the futility of the many things on which man wastes his _ substance. She had lived her long life and she knew that most things were not worth the candle. She was calm with the philosophy of great age. There was only one thing now that she was waiting for. Slowly I discovered what that was -when I did I knew that there was no way out. Rosie was waiting for death. Pa th ae ; ONE day Rosie came in with’ a bad limp and I thought her turn might have come. I looked for sharp stones

or sticks in her feet, but there \ nothing. Maybe she had caught hk leg in one of the nasty little holes that were all over the paddock. Then I saw her capering up to the dividing fence to see the bull who was just across the wire-she coquetted up and down before him without any sign of the limp. I'll say that for her, the old girl was a woman through and through, the sight of a male thrilled her as much as ever. Anyway, I didn’t take much notice of the limp after, although she still made hard going of it unless her boy-friend was around. But I could see the thing Rosie was waiting for coming closer and closer in her eyes. And she was ready for it, she walked wearily, she held her head lower. I felt she wasn’t listening to my singing any more, she was listening for other things. And then, when I went out one morning after a night when the wind had blown in cold rain and brought the temperature down with a bump, I found Rosie as usual in the sheltered little spot behind the tower. But her milking days were over. She lay on her side with her brown and white coat soaked with the rain. Her head was thrown back, and her one open eye stared upwards calmly. Rosie’s time had come. I walked slowly back to the house with the bucket and returned with a spade. I spent the rest of the day digging." Even in death Rosie was a very large cow. ~ When°I was finished there was nothing else to do. The days dragged after that. I didn’t feel like singing any more. The silence began to get on my nerves. Finally, I sent word back by the fiext boat-I had a feeling that maybe the city would rush me around, push the memories of that old friend of mine into.the background. ° But so far the people are just the same, they still get in my hair, they only make me remember. It’s funny how hard it is to forget an old brown and white cow.