Not long after dawn and already the cottage was a hive of activity. Only fools or those with no choice would venture outside, for torrents of rain hit the windows every which way. Gutters overflowed. Water accumulated in dips on the path. Dwarf camellias drooped and daphne flowers were pushed from their twigs. High above, on the ridgeline overlooking the cottage, wind gusts rushed through a ragged line of elderly macrocarpas. The great branches creaked and strained.
The occupants of the cottage were a mother and daughter. Both had happily accepted their fate that today was a day for staying put. Their home was as warm as fresh toast. A fire, made with perfectly dried wood, burnt in the log burner. The kitchen smelt like cinnamon sugar and melted butter. Soft blankets were neatly folded on the sofa. Every light and lamp had been flung on so from the outside the windows glowed with an amber light. A mantelpiece clock ticked serenely. Mānuka smoke wafted from the chimney to mingle with the heavy clouds.
The mother was sorting out what clothes still fitted her daughter. Fuelled by bowls of porridge, pasta and frozen berries, her daughter grew in front of her eyes, lankily like a sweet pea tendril. Overnight, her fingernails had turned to talons and her hair had grown a tangled inch. Her milk teeth dangled by threads threatening to fall out whenever she bit into an apple.
Some would say their cottage was oppressively tiny. They had no room for the nostalgic keeping of outgrown clothes. But the mother would choose this home over one with sufficient cupboards any time. Her love for it was in her bones. Occasionally, she felt the desire to shout, “Mine! My very own lopsided place.”
She dropped armfuls of clothing from dresser drawers onto the bedroom floor. T-shirt arms cradled shorts and pyjama legs cradled skirts. She would store away particularly special pieces, a tiny bee costume of a stripy leotard with mesh wings and an attached yellow tutu for example. Worn beyond repair and added to a box labelled KEEP. A sweatshirt with a duckling print was dropped into the DISCARD box. She had no memory of her daughter wearing it. The magnitude of the task ahead of her was daunting. Daunting was an understatement. The clothes’ pile infuriated her.
In the living room, her daughter built a fire using wooden blocks and an orange scarf. She held her palms up to the warmth of invisible embers. No longer was she a child with a stomach full of pancakes but a scullery maid living in an attic. Only loved and wanted by a large and inquisitive rat.
And the girl, the girl, smoothed her pinafore and went onto the garret roof to see the stars through the London smog.
The daughter opened the back door. Cold air took the opportunity to rush down the hallway and rattle the windows. The mother paused for a moment before picking up a sock. She marvelled that her daughter’s foot had ever been small enough to fit inside. The sock was pristinely clean having never stepped on the ground. She slipped it over her thumb.
The back door slammed. “Mum! Come see! There’s a cat in the house.”
The daughter was sitting on the floor, by the log burner, with an ugly cat firmly grasped on her lap; her face was buried into its fur. ‘I love you,’ she murmured as droplets of water fell from her hair.
The mother sniffed. She had no time for cats with their natural but cruel predilection for hunting even when well-fed. “How’d it get in?” she asked.
Her daughter beamed. “I carried her. She was getting wet in the rain and looked sad sitting under the honeysuckle hedge. Can you please change your mind about me getting a cat. I’ll put a bell on her so she can’t catch a bird.”
The cat sank down so its chin rested on its dirty paws; smugly satisfied with the adoration it considered its due. By day, a lap dweller, ponderous and needy, only revealing killer teeth when yawning. By night, a stealthy hunter, prowling through the grass and clover with other hunters, belly low to the ground leaving mutilated wētā in its wake. The daughter flinched as it pressed its paws into her skin with extended claws.
The mother passed her a cushion with faded fabric. “Put it on this.”
Reluctantly, the daughter loosened her clutch, allowing the cushion to be slid under. Their visitor purred in a stuttering fashion, ‘purr, pause, purrrr, purr’, pause, its technique intermittently forgotten.
“We’ll put it out soon,” the mother said, perched on a sofa arm. “It might have fleas.” The inviting blankets beside her were a flea paradise and the cat had extravagantly long fur.
“Not now.” The daughter sang a song about the beauty of the tail and whiskers. Her adoration filled the room from dusty corner to dusty corner.
What odd creatures we humans are to crave the comfort and company of another animal, even ones known to be fickle and disloyal.
The mother cleared her throat and said, “It should be with its proper family.’’
“Shhh,” the daughter interrupted. “She’s sleeping. If you get me a cat, I won’t want a sister anymore. I’ll get one no one wants.” Her voice quivered. “An abandoned one.”
She had requested a sister since kindergarten. During her first week she created a sibling convincing enough that a concerned teacher asked why this ringleted baby never came to drop-offs or pick-ups.
The mother knew she would never again breastfeed a milky infant on a sagging armchair or wallow through seamless days and nights. But, sometimes, the guilt of having an only child worked its way under her skin like a sliver of glass into the sole of her foot.
The wind gusts increased to a gale. The macrocarpa branches strained to break free. Cr-eak, cr-eak. The cottage trembled. The mother’s ears pricked. It only took one wolf to arrive and blow the house down.
The daughter was unperturbed. “I particularly want a tabby. When can I get one?”
The mother reached down to stroke her daughter’s cheek. “How about when you’re ten?”
“The same day I get my ears pierced?” The daughter had a hopeful nature.
The cat relocated to the blankets to sleep. The mother made crumbly scones which, when eaten fresh from the oven, with blobs of jam, were morsels of delight. The daughter took the bee costume out of the KEEP box and struggled her body into it. With dogged determination she then cut out rectangles in the box and snipped the duckling sweatshirt into curtains. These she stuck to the cardboard with sparkling sticky tape. Sprawled across the carpet she printed ‘W.E.L.C.A.M’ on a large piece of paper, holding each crayon so tightly her fingers ached.
She placed the paper by the box’s opening and lifted the cat from its slumber. “All yours, my beautiful,” she said, putting it inside.
The mother admired her daughter, her messy hair, her freckled nose, her dimpled hands. The whole scene was Victorian Christmas card pretty.
“You know if you had a sibling you’d have to sleep in your own bed?” she said.
Her daughter nodded. “I’ve been thinking about sleeping in my room.”
“Really?”
“Well, you told me it has to happen sooner or later.”
This statement sounded so careless, so brittle, when you did not want to hear it. For they had always slept with their heads pressed together in a tangle of flannelette sheets and feather pillows. How right it felt to the mother knowing she was always there to reassure her daughter if she woke alarmed. She never needed to fear the night.
The daughter lifted and dropped the duckling curtains. The cat’s paw darted in and out. “I’m lonely being the only kid in the house.:
“Are you?”
“Yes….” The daughter startled. “Are you lonely?” she asked. The glimmer of this brand-new thought is a terrible possibility.
“No. I have you.”
Placated, the daughter said, “Children want someone to play with. Don’t you like babies?”
“I loved you from the second you were born. The midwife put you on my chest. You took everything in. The voices, the shadows moving around. You looked at me quizzically as if to say, Who are you?”
Tears sprang to her eyes. Love had not been the emotion she felt for that funny little ugly baby. Bewilderment would be too kind a word also. Disinterested. She had felt nothing more than disinterest. If she could travel back to that night, she would tell everyone else to leave, including her daughter’s father. And once alone she would undo the muslin wrap that swaddled her baby and she would gaze at this new soul. Her earlobes, her delicate ribs, fluttering breath, pursed lips suckling the air. She would place a kiss on the baby’s forehead and whisper, “Hello, my beautiful one. Welcome to our wonderful life.”
Rain hit the corrugated iron roof, a beloved sound. The wind howled and the macrocarpa branches struggled with heightened vigour to break free. Cre-ak, cre-ak. Then an almighty crash. All the lights and lamps snapped off and the cottage plummeted into darkness. The daughter screamed and began to cry. The cat grabbed her hand in its claws. The mother slapped the box. The cat shot out and, without a glimmer of remorse, slowed to a saunter and left the room with its tail held haughtily in the air.
“Don’t come back!” the mother shouted after it.
She stroked the hairbreadth scratches on her daughter’s hand.
Tears rolled down the girl’s cheeks. “Why did the lights go out?”
“A tree must have fallen. Did you hear it?”
The daughter shook her head. “How come she scratched me?”
“Cats are like that. It’s not allowed in again.”
Sadness turned to fury. “Yes, she is! She didn’t mean to hurt me. She was overwhelmed. Hungry. She has no words!”
“It hurt you. It’s not allowed back.”
“You can’t stop her coming into the garden. Cat or sister. I don’t care which one, as long as they don’t leave me. Please!” She wrenched her hand away, lay face down on her stomach and shrugged off any reassuring touch.
The mother cast her eye around, from dusty corner to dusty corner. How different this place was with the comforting glow of the lamps extinguished. The fire now burnt in a tentative fashion. No longer was the room a scene from a Christmas card but something else.
“Candles. I’ll light candles,” she said. “Would you like to strike the matches?”
The daughter stayed silent.
The afternoon became dusky. A mist threatened to engulf the cottage, but the mother placed tea lights along the sills, shelves and tables. The wicks created golden orbs which shone out through the finger smudged windows. When the matches stopped striking the daughter lifted her head. She walked, almost reverently, to the windowsill and the line of swaying flames.
“Oh look,” said the daughter. Her face astonished. “The candles are dancing with their reflections.”
The tiny flames bowed and shimmied with their partners.
The mother could not help but peer beyond the glass and into darkening overgrowth. Beyond the fence and up, up, to the ridgeline where kākā whistled, circled, and swooped. The evening star had risen.
“Mum?” The daughter tugged on her mother’s skirt and rested her head against her stomach. “Can you see?” She pointed. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Aren’t they,” the mother replied.
Susannah Poole’s love for Katherine Mansfield’s stories, particularly those featuring Kezia, began when watching Cathy Downes reciting ‘The Aloe’ during her performance of ‘The Case of Katherine Mansfield’ in 1985. Susannah lives in Wellington with her partner and their two daughters. She spends her days writing, baking and ignoring the washing pile.