THE BATH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 511, 8 April 1949, Page 14

THE BATH

Written for "The

Listener" by

TUI

night. For a whole month I had looked forward to this moment. Oh, yes, I had had sponge baths almost every day-a loathsome business in which you stand in the middle of the bedroom with a minute tin bowl and pass a damp cloth over your body in bits and while your tummy is being washed, your bottom feels clammy and cold; and you. never seem to be able to get it properly warm and dry for ages afterwards. The bath had been going to be fixed for a long time and had actually been mended on Wednesday-a very simple matter of pouring a bit more cement into the bottom. But Saturday night was Bath-night, and even if it had been fixed on Monday we would still have had to wait till Saturday becatise that is the night when it is right and proper that one should have a bath. Before tea on Saturday, the boiler in the corn@r of the wash-house was lit and the acrid woodsmoke from the leaky chimney pefvaded the house. After tea the beautiful hot water was bucketed GO For night was bath-

through the smoky haze into the bath in the other corner of the wash-house. One could hardly see one end of the room from the other and the smoke made the eyes sting, but I cried cheerfully, because I was going to wallow: in a delicious soapy froth right up to my neck (I hoped). * % * T last everything was ready and I stepped into the scented water (I had added some eau-de-cologne, since this was a special occasion). The water was soft and lathered easily. The bottom was extremely rough where successive amounts of cement had been poured in and I felt my seat would look like a rubber stamp, but I lay back and luxuriated. Along the walls on every available ledge there were bottles-bottles of all shapes and sizes, and I marvelled at the variety of uses humanity has for bottles. They had contained vinegar, essence, wine, perfume, cordial, jam, preserves, hair-tonic, sauce, whisky, and all varieties of medicines for human or animal consumption. They were all represented,

for it is an eccentricity of my aunt who has lived in this house for forty years that nothing that has any slightest chance of future usefulness is ever thrown away. All is saved and a great deal of the product of this saving habit is concentrated in the washhouse. Packed all along the side of the bath, allowing only a small space in which to approach it, are cartons each methodically filled with empty match-boxes, paper-bags, small cardboard cartons, brown paper, string, screws and nails, empty cigarette packets, tins, corks, and old clothes.

bad * ne SMALL kitten climbed up on a dirty clothes basket and viewed me from the wooden sides of the bath. He looked surprised and interested-too interested. I was almost embarrassed.

I continued my reflections on my aunt’s character. I decided that to be wealthy and t@ live in the back-blocks would be pleasant, but to be poor in (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) the back-blocks does queer things to people. Then I went on with the inventory of the walls. Innumerable nails held a conglomeration of pots with holes in them, rusty lanterns, lamps, straw hats, leaky iron kettles, old sticky sou’westers, rusty billies, and old hot-water bags. Along one wall, kerosene boxes had been arranged to form shelves, and here the shoes of forty years were stacked. There were quaint pointed-toed button boots, and shoes with dangerously waisted heels of a bygone fashion. A pair of once white satin shoes pathetically suggested they were the aunt’s wedding slippers and had pattered joyfully down the aisle all those years ago. And gum-boots-they were there by the dozen-both in the smaller size of my aunt and the farmer size of my uncle. I seemed to see those gum-boots of aunt’s trudging morning and evening to the cow-shed and returning with the buckets of milk-gallons of milk, tons of milk-that she must have carried in forty years. Small shoes were there too -the first shoes of her children, a small boy’s sandals, a bigger boy’s_ school boots, a pair of larger army boots related to the rifle in the corner that: had belonged to her son, * * * CURIOUS about a large old book that stood on a shelf, I emerged from the bath, dried my deliciously warm steamy body, put on my best silk pyjamas and dressing-gown, and examined the book -the Complete Educator, 1894. Soon I was lost in the marvels of electricity end ‘the telephone. I pulled out a newspaper from the bottom of a pile, yellow with age and chewed round the edges no doubt by many generations of tats. It was dated March 17, 1876, and must have been preserved for some reason that I could not fathom. Then I realised that though time might stand still I could not. It was Saturday night, and my Aunt and Uncle no doubt would be waiting for their bath too. But never before or since has a bath been quite so good.