GRACE TO COME HOME TO...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 478, 20 August 1948, Page 20

GRACE TO COME HOME TO...

| Written for "The Listener’

by

S.P.

L.

PICKED them up at the crossroads where Bert had dropped them from the service car and the kid got in beside me and Winky climbed in the back with the stores and the spare tyre. When he banged on the roof, saying,

"dake .her’ away, Skip," I knew I was not mistaken: it was Winky all right. He hadn’t recognised

me, Dut that wasnt surprising, for it was all of eight years since I’d seen him last and he’d changed considerably in that time. I’d changed a bit myself, I suppose, what with Grace and the nipper and one thing and another. The kid started talking at once, Either they talk a lot or they make just one crack to show they’re on top of things. This kid was a talker. "This isn’t my line," he said. "Not my line at all. Second-hand car racketthat’s me.. Buyer. I got to go into town

Monday to pick up some dough. You go in Mondays? Out here they don’t know prices-don’t know what goes on at all. Give ’em one-fifty for an old Beauty . model and they ,think it’s _ Christmas. Trees? I don’t know one tree from another. I’m only down here to do business."

I gave him a short answer for I was thinking of Winky, my old boozing partner, up there in the

back, Hed be the new babbler, of course. Cooking was always his speciality and -I’d known for some weeks that Skelton was turning the job in. Cooks seldom stay long in these forest camps. They make a quick clean up and they clear out, or they’re no good and they get into difficulties with the store. I wondered how long Winky would stay. About a couple of months, I was picking. The kid would stay less -say a fortnight. They’d get fed up with him through his lies-I know the ‘type-and early one morning I’d be

driving him back to the crossroads. He’d be quiet then, getting ready to bite me for ten hog just at the last. .What a hope! I pick them up at the crossroads by the hoarding-black stumps against’ a red glow and big letters across the Tot:

KEEP YOUR COUNTRY GREENand sooner or later, a week, a fortnight, sometimes a couple of months, back I drive them-most of them happy as Larry and full of what they said to the foreman and breaking their silly necks to’ get stuck’ into that hops at Benson’s,

but some of them broke and a bit low, the way this kid would be. Sooner or later they go down the road, all of them. "Thanks," they tell me. "Thanks a lot, Harry. Be seeing you." "Be good," I ' say. "Have one for me. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do." Me, I always go back. I’m staff. "Grace," the wheels say as I drive home. "Grace. Grace to come home to." "Sydney now," said the kid. ‘"Sydney’s tough. «When I carry money around Sydney I carry a gun too." "Not a fortnight," I thought. "Maybe the day after to-morrow." Quite a few of them are like that-not the entire pound. We stopped outside the Ranger’s office and Winky took a good look at me. "Well," he said. "Well, well, well."

We shook hands. "How is she, Winky? You look all right, boy. Box 0’ birds." The lines in his face were much deeper, his crooked nose seemed longer and crookeder, and his thick hair was quite grey. "Why," he said, "you're going bald, you old so-and-so," "I'm married, Winky. I got a nipper."

"Me too,’ he said. "Or almost. I’ve learnt me lesson." Pa * * DON’T eat at the cookhouse-Grace and I have a nice home in the married quarters and when it comes to cooking Grace knows it all-but I heard from the boys that the new babbler was all right. He was free with returns, there was plenty of variety in the tucker, and he dished it up to look tasty. He was clean, too, and not surly and filled up with booze all the time like the run of babblers. And he’d got a head on him. Tuesdays you had to be there with those chips right on the dot, As soon as I knew Winky was off it and going straight I had him round to see Grace and young Alison. He hit it off with the kid and Grace was nice to him as she is to everyone. It’s awkward, in a way, having an old mate like Winky round to see the Missus, and I dare say I overdid the heartiness a bit (roaring, "Come in, old-timer! Make yourself at our place!) but Grace was just right with her quiet smile and "It’s nice ‘to know you, Mr. Winkworth. Any friend of Harry’s ...." Women do this better than men. Soon she was calling him Winky and he was telling her the whole story. No, he wasn’t married yet, but it was all fixed. He'd been saving for some time now and he reckoned on another three months of hard slogging. By August he’d be just about right. He showed-us a photograph of a big woman with a pleasant smile. She didn’t look more than. thirty-thirty-five. ‘Nice work, Wink," I told him, and Grace said gently: "It’s much nicer being married." While Grace was getting supper I tried to explain how it was with us, but all I could talk about was the water a

hot when you come home and the socks mended and the feeling that for every pound you spend you get back twenty shillings in value and maybe a bit over. I couldn’t tell him about helping Grace with the dishes Saturdays and Sundays, or dropping off to sleep sometimes two nights running with the light burning still and Grace, her shoulder against mine, deep in those True Stories she’s keen aon, or of the feeling I have, sweet and safe, when I put the boys down at Benson’s. "No. I'd like to, fellers. I got tea waiting." * * * DRIVE Winky down the road just a month later. The kid was up behind this time and he was pretty white still. They'd found him at the last moment with a blanket he’d got down on and they'd had his gear open all over the

back of the truck. He'd lasted longer than I'd reckoned . . . Winky shorter. I'd known we'd be making this trip the moment I went into the cookhouse two nights earlier with the boys’ mail. Winky, who’d been into town ordering stores, was leaning out of the hatch with a sil'y smile on his face and stuff spilt all around him on the counter, trying to ladle some horrible burnt stuff

on to plates. Behind him you could see four bottles of wine, one half empty, and two cartons of beer. "Good boys," he was saying. "All good boys. The best." Two or three men round the hatch were egging him on, and Winky, of course, thought he had the whole mob right. behind him and tickled pink. He couldn’t see the hungry men farther along in the queue and dirty looks he was getting. Only the men. near the hatch laughed when the big stew pot went over, splashing stew everywhere. Winky laughed loudest of all. "Be in," he said. "Help yourselves. Fill your boots." I was round early next morning with a load of firewood and Winky had his head in a sack of cabbages and was snoring horribly. I’ve never seen such a mess. He’d been ill quite a bit, there was beer spilt everywhere, and the men had been into ‘his tinned stuff for a feed and they hadn’t been fussy about cleaning up afterwards. There were empty and half-empty tins on and around the hatch and over most of the floor. They must have done in about seven or eight quids’ worth of tinned stuff. I shodk him awake and he looked. up at me out of gummy eyes, waiting for me to speak and trying to remember things. I’ve been through it myself, so I knew what he wanted me to say, even if it wasn’t true: "You're right, Winky. You didn’t put a foot wrong. Everything’s as sweet as pie." I nearly did say it, because he wanted to hear it so. much, but it wouldn’t have done any good. I'd seen the Ranger performing while Winky was screaming round the (continued on page 23)

SHORT STORY

(continued from page 1) lawn in front of his house after midnight being a dive-bomber. They go mad when they’ve been off it that long. "Quite a night," he said, waiting for me to speak. "Quite a night. How did ‘I go, Harry? Any kicks?" "You're out, Winky," I said. "You went mad." He tried to make the right sort of crack, but he was too ill, and he put his head back among the cabbages. eee * INKY didn’t say much as we drove along. I was taking him and the kid as far as Benson’s because Bert

doesnt stop at the crossroads Saturdays. I gathered he’d done not so badly. The new man had taken over his stores and any outstanding debts and chucked him a few quid in the bargain. He was clean and shaved, but still a bit shaky on it. He’d been putting himself right with what was left of the booze and I can’t say I blamed , = oe > a

646485 owe out of these tl things (chaps saying, "And how is she now, Wink? How’s the old. dive-bomber?") you can’t wash out any other way. I know. I remember the time the gantry fell downwe'd got into some rum in the navy yard and I hadn't fixed her properlycrushing old Rangi’s toe. I was lucky he wasn’t killed, but to hear me telling it that night in the pub, with the boys laughing themselves sick, you’d think it was the funniest thing ever. And that time at Big Mary’s-I was only a kid then-when I woke up dry as a wooden god~and there was a glass of water between my bed and the one next it; an old deadbeat’s. I got it down in one gulp and I remember how I felt when those false teeth smacked against mine and seemed to stick there. I could have cut my throat on the spot with no trouble, but later I had them roaring the way I told it and I got free drinks on it, too. Not once, but a hundred times. \

So I couldn’t blame Winky. You just have to put yourself right. Me, I dare say I'd never have come right at all but for Grace. I didn’t love her that morning I asked her to marry me, but I’d have settled for less-less looks, less sense, less everything. It was that or going round to see Jonesy the fifth morning running. I didn’t think she’d have me, but she did. ES m a ] DROPPED Winky and the kid at Benson’s before going on into town to pick up some angle iron. Winky was quiet and a bit lofty, He wasn’t having even the one.. He was going straight up to the city by the next train to join his girl. August-Hell! |

ried seen me and Grace and he reckoned he could take a hint. I picked up the angle iron and was still early enough to pass the school bus -late as usual-on my way home. I tooted the horn twice for young Alison and caught a glimpse of her in the driving mirror waving with the other children in the hack. The bus, a 15cwt. pick-up

like mine, went by fast, trailing dust and some ragged singing. You'll get a fish-ee on a little dish-ee, You'll. get a jumping jack. when Daddy comes home. I'd been doing a bit of a grin up till then, but now it didn’t seem funny any longer what I’d seen at Benson’s while calling in there on my way back from town for Ma Walker’s stout: Winky up against a bar, a whisky in one hand and change from a fiver in the other, and the kid and that rabbiter from Murray’s Creek roaring with laughter. "Over she went," Winky was saying. "Pot and all, Stew? You never seen stew like it! ‘Fill your boots,’ I tells them, ‘Fill your boots. . ."" Winky was right again. He'd missed the train, of but he was right again, ,I couldn’t blame him. "Grace 3," said the wheels of the old Chevvy, "diated shingle under the mudguards. "Grace. Grace to come home to." ~