THE WHIRLPOOL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 482, 17 September 1948, Page 29

THE WHIRLPOOL

A short story written for "The

. Listener" by

RUTH

FRANCE

-- ie mene’ TS a strange thing how I bought’ a coat the other day. and it reminded me of things I'd forgotten, and it was like opening a door, or going back to a place you haven’t seen for years. You seem out of time, and the present grows hazy It wasn’t till "after I brought ‘the coat home, though, that it reminded me. It’s funny how "éverything goes in tides, and. comes full circle. Lives, and ‘civilisations, and fashions. : The coat had a double cape, like a coachman’s, and it wasn’t till I tried it on at home that I remembered the other coat I had when I was five years old. It had three capes, and a tight collar band, and I wore with it a cap of the same grey material, with a fur border. Perhaps this coat is special in my mind because it’s the first one I remember. I was beginning, womanlike, to take an interest in my appearance. It pleased me when my teacher, on a bitter day, seeing her brood were well wrapped up when they left school, remarked "Now there is a warm coat." But that was a bit later. The coat was hought, in the first place, for the holiday. Meggie and I were going for a holiday, all on our own, to our aunt’s place in the country. Meggie, who was a year older than I, had a new coat, too, Hers was blue. She always had blue, because she was very fair with blue eyes, and so I had to have grey, or rose, or apricot. In fact, it’s only recently I've worn blue at all, having gained ’-e implacable conviction in childhood that it didn’t suit me. I don’t remember thé train journey at all, whether we were taken, or just met at the other end. I was in that stage of childhood when you remember things yery vividly or not at all. I don't remember my aunt’s house, and a few years later she moved to Puaha, The house there I do remember, chiefly because, in country fashion; the front door was seldom used, in fact, it was rarely opened. ’ Our two cousins, Annie and Mary, were the same age as we were. Annie was dark and forceful, Mary was’ fair, plump, and placid. But we were all fond of our own way, and inclined to argument, and I remember my aunt trying to make peace between us. * Perhaps because I was used to.the plains, the sense of being folded in by hills impressed me deeply, even then. It seemed comfortable. Young as I was, I noticed how green everything was in the valleys, though it was late in the season. I was used to the bare northern slopes that fronted on to Canterbury. : * * * HE stream was another thing that impressed me. It bubbled down from the hills and wound along the valley. Sometimes it chattered among shingles and rocks, and you could pick your way across quite easily on the

boulders. Here, in the open, mint grew in the water.. Its wild, pungent scent fitted so well with the crystal of the water that nothing man could have planted there, you felt, would have been so suitable. Watercress grew. in more shady places, under the trees, where the water ran dark and placid, but mint b¥onged to the sunlight and. the breeze blowing and.the broken water that had curved, a’ moment before, like a bent back over a boulder, The stream curved in front of my aunt’s house over a rush of boulders. You had to go over a bridge to reach the house, which was closed in by a fence and a white gate. The fence was only.a wire one, but it was so grown over by gooseberry bushes and sweet peas and the passion vine they’d brought down from Kati-Kati that you hardly noticed it, Then, in the lower end of the paddock, in a wooded hollow, the stream curved, turned back on itself, and. made a second hairpin bend before it ran under the fence into the property of Mr. Monahan. Mr. Morahan had a bull, which reason alone should have kept us away from that area, but the lower end of the paddock was doubly cursed, for in the second hairpin bend of the’ stream was the whirlpool. Whether it really Was a whirlpool! I now couldn’t tell you. I know the children were sure of it, and made our city-bred flesh creep with the telling of what would happen to us if we fell in. the water. Annie was especially good at telling of the horrid suck and whirl which slowly but relentlessly drew its victim to the centre of the vortex, and down to uppermost depths from whence the body could never be recovered, I was only a little girl, but I can remember to this day the horror with which Annie invested that pool, the way in which she told us that the Maoris believed it was the home of the taniwha, who had claimed one Maori child as his victim in recent years, and doubtless many more in distant ages. Certainly the pool was shunned, but then, it was in an unattractive spot, damp, and shadowed by trees, with the near-by bull to further discourage one.\ And then again, the pool was deep, .and dark, with an evil flavour. % * * URING the weeks we were there we seldom visited the pool. Quite likely we were forbidden to do so, But there came a day, one of those days which seem, on looking back, to have worked (continued on next page)

| SHORT STORY (continued from previous page) so surely to its climax that must have been inevitable. The kind of day that makes you believe in fate, and in predestination. To begin with, it was hot. A windless day in late summer when the heat is cupped in the hills and the men cutting cocksfoot on the yellow slopes are like slow flies burdened by their own movement. The bees were blundering in the sweet peas, grasshoppers were shrilling their intolerable note, and the only cool sound was that of the

stream, glucking among its boulders. We were drawn to the stream as surely as though we were brumby cattle of the Australian __ desert. We followed — it across the paddock from the swimming pool, drawn as mutch by the current as were the leaves and twigs that floated upon it. There was a great deal to interest us. We found dead dragon-flies, hunted for bullies, and ate watercress. We left our shoes by the bridge and squelch-

ed our toes in the mud, and trailed our dolls until they were as damp as we were. We were all very proud of our dolls, and took them everywhere. bod 3 % T was late in the morning when we finished up at the whirlpool, There it lay, in to-day’s heat, cool and inviting. The trees that hemmed it in no longer seemed dank, the moss and slime at the brink was now a cool green, not a rancid one. Because of the slope of the ground, on the upper side of the pool there was a deep bank, while the lower boasted a beach of sandy mud. Here we dipped our toes with a sense of brave excitement, while Annie again sought to terrify us with her -tales of horror. But the day was too hot, Then we ate konini berries, but there’s no flesh, really, just skin and pip. The elderberries were better, though we didn’t care for them, éither. We ate them because they were there, and edible. The berries inspired Annie to more tales of horror, of poison ivy, nettle stings, and the terrible fate of cows which had eaten tutu. It was probably all this induced us, when we Had somehow wandered back and over the bridge and then on to the back on the other side of the whirlpool, to play at hospitals. All through our childhood hospitals was our favourite game. My part was usually a quiescent one, that of patient. After Meggie had put my broken leg in splints and my neck in plaster, bandaged my hands and given me soup, she thought she would make my bed again before bringing in my baby. : sf . "Shift over, Kate,’ she said crossly, "I can’t get the sheet off."

"How can I shift over? My neck’s broken. There isn’t any sheet anyway." "If there’s no sheet then your neck isn’t broken. Go on, shift over a bit. I want your: bed on the soft grass. It’s nicer." "It’s too near the edge. I'll fall in the whirlpool." "Don’t be silly. You’re miles away. Go on. There that’s better." She settled me down and went to get my doll. Women in hospital always had babies. I lay there and looked at the tracery of trees above my head, and ran my fingers through the soft grass. Such soft green grass, and the earth beneath it was soft too and black. So

comfortable. Meggie came back with my doll, and for some pervetse reason, in order to tuck in beside me, went round and knelt on the edge of the bank above the water. She was just rising to her feet when the earth gave way, and before she had time to shout she disappeared into the whirlpool. I’m afraid none of us were heroes. I rolled away from the edge (it was only luck I hadn’t gone in too) and the three of us went

shrieking up to the house with a noise to wake the dead. Annie was first, but my aunt heard us coming, and when Mary and I panted over the "bridge we were in time to see her shake some sense out of Annie and fly out of the garden. Fly is the word. She didn’t go round by the gate. My aunt wasn’t a young woman, but she went over the fence in one leap-she jumped right over it, Mary kept repeating afterwards, in awe, she jumped right over it. Meggie was all right, as it happened. She was clinging to some. branches growing out over the water, which there, under the bank, were deep and frightening. When I struggled back, my knees like jelly,.my aunt was helping Meggie up to the grass, where they collapsed in the ruins of the hospital. Mary and I sat down too, and for a few minutes we all wept, and then my aunt blew her nose and said "Well!" I expect she’d have liked to spank us all, to relieve her feelings. Then she carried the bedraggled Meggie, now shaking with cold and fright, to the house, where she put her to bed \with hot water bottles. * * JERHAPS by this time my aunt thought she’d had enough of us, for the next day she sent my mother a telegram, and mother arrived the same evening. She was pale and distraught, and spent a good deal of time going over Meggie to see if she wasn’t hurt at all, and trying unobtrusively to listen to her breathing, to see if she hadn’t caught cold. Meggie, who was now quite well, enjoyed herself. She sat at the tea-table, eating pikelets and basking in attention while Annie, who'd never had such a chance for recounting drama, went over and over her story. All the time mother listened ae 9 glancing at Meggie to make sure she was still there.

I loved my mother dearly. I couldn’t stand it any longer. "T pushed her," I said. "Pushed who, dear?" said mother. "I pushed her," I repeated loudly. "I pushed Meggie into the whirlpool. She knelt beside me and I pushed her." Annie .looked at me with her mouth open. "Don’t be silly, dear," said mother. "The bank gave way. Or did it?" Suddenly .she was aghast.. And certainly I'd gained her attention. "That’s lies," shouted Annie. "It’s lies, Kate. You can see where the bank fell down. You're a big fib." "I’m not a fib. It’s true. I pushed her," I burst into tears. By now I believed my own story. "She’s overwrought," said my. aunt, "We all are." "She’d better go to bed, I think," said my mother. "It's a long journey in the morning." * * ne SAT on the edge of the bed in the the room I shared with Meggie. I hadn’t undressed. Instead, I'd put on my new coat because it reminded me of home. I was dreadfully unhappy, and homesick. I was so unhappy I wanted to die. That would show them. I'd drown myself in the whirlpool and that would show them. Muttering to myself, I climbed out of the low window. I hesitated when I found it was raining. The hot weather of the day before had given way to a southerly storm which during the afternoon had crept over the hills in long white trails of cloud. Now the wind and rain had | come, making the evening an unfriendly | twilight. But I was very unhappy. I wen* on, . Going to the whirlpool in daylight with other children, I found, wasn’t the same as going at dusk on one’s own, in a murmurous world that spoke with wind and rain and a stream already swollen and discoloured. The trees groaned, the grasses whispered wetly bia my shoes, the shadows became "se and menacing. By the time I reached. the whirlpool I was terrified. I stood on the beach for a long time. I hadn't the courage to throw myself off the bank, so I’d gone to the shallow side that shelved more gradually. I was going to walk into the water, perhaps to savour my agony to the full, perhaps to leave a way of retreat if I wanted it. To jump off the high bank was too irrevocable. ae was only the thought of my family the remorse that would smite them ike drove me finally into the water. It didn’t seem much use to take my clothes off, since they were wet already so I walked in until the water covered my shoes. The feel of it was like a cold knife round my ankles. I tried to gather the courage to go further. Actually the bull gave me the excuse to turn tail that I'd been waiting for. But that’s not to say it didn’t frighten me into a frenzy. So much so, that afterwards I wasn’t sure it hadn’t been the taniwha. As I was standing there, with my heart going lower and lower and my feet seeming rooted in the mud, there came from beyond the fence a puffing and wheezing and trampling, and a shadow loomed up and tossed its head above the wires as though it would be no effort at all to leap over. All I

could think of then was that I wanted, more than anything in the world, my mother. I turned, but my feet had sunk in the mud, and I fell. I fell towards the beach, and in only a few inches of water, but mobody ever reached a deeper and more lost despair than I did in that moment. I really thought I was going to drown in the whirlpool. After a few moments I managed to get up from my hands and knees and stagger out of the water. I made for the house as though all the terror in the world was behind me, as indeed it was. Forgotten was all thought of impressing my relatives. I burst in the kitchen door, and, since I was thought to be in & Rad, caused quite a’ sensation. "T fell in the’ biti I shrieked. "T fell in the whirlpool!" My mother came to me in alarm, but then her face cleared. "Kate, child. You’re telling lies again. Whatever have you been doing out in the rain? You're soaked. And the mud! Look at your new coat! How am I going to clean it before the morning?" % * Bo HAD plenty of time on the journey home to reflect-on the bitterness of life. All. I'd achieved was a whipping for telling lies and soiling my new coat, But Meggie, in some strange way, still glowed as a heroine. So