Title: Sport 16

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, March 1996, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 16: Autumn 1996

Jane Gardner

page 96

Jane Gardner

Kitchen, Morning

Here is the kitchen of a house in Mount Victoria,
Forties cream and green with a big wooden table.
Two old people and their little daughter eat here.
A little dog sits on the stairs over there.

The stairs leave the kitchen like a shaft of darkness.
Up them is a living room no one uses much.
There are books, an empty sofa, a sewing machine,
A twangly piano that the child is exiled to.

She prefers to come back down to the kitchen
Where the colour of the lino suddenly reminds her
Of the scummy green colour of polluted Tiber water
In Rome, where she went in 1977.

She arrives back in the kitchen in 1956,
And has breakfast with her father before he goes to work.
He wears a dull suit, a boring tie, a moustache
Dark from smoking. They eat in friendly silence.

These are radio days. Dad listens to the News.
The BBC Home Service is the best news to get.
It has a strange echo sound, the man talks under water.
It goes on for a very, very, very long time.

The news says lots of things about the Suez Canal.
Dad came here in ‘29, but still claims he’s English.
He starts to go on about the end of Britain’s greatness.
His daughter doesn’t want the news to upset him.

page 97

The announcer has a very nice British-sounding voice.
Dad sounds like a New Zealander except when he’s angry.
Then you can tell he’s a Londoner, really.
He says ‘bloody’ and ‘Mondee’, and ‘fire injin red’.

The child is a New Zealander and wishes she were English.
This is because she loves her father best.
Her mother is the parent who hits her with a stick (a lot).
Her mother is the person who speaks the mother tongue.

Mum’s proud she’s a third generation Kiwi,
But she calls England ‘Home’ and is a snob about accents.
If the little girl says ‘mulk’, her mother corrects her,
‘Milk!’ The child is allergic to milk.

Dad will be leaving for work in a minute.
Mum is crashing noisily, she does this every morning.
The child asks her father how the man on the radio
Knows to stop talking when someone turns it off.

Dad explains about radio waves. They can’t get in
If the radio’s off. The child has a thought of little lost birds.
Her father says ‘Cheerio’, and goes out of the house.
‘Don’t forget to pick up the meat’, says his wife.

Now it’s time for the child to walk to school.
It seems to be a very, very, very long way.
Some radio waves flap about in the sky,
Crying bitterly. Many of them live near here.

page 98

Round the Block

Part 1

The child who’s been told she is a born liar
Has a solemn respect for the truth.
She knows what it is. She goes out on her scooter,
Coasts down the hill to the factory wall.

She stands on her scooter on tallest tip toes.
She grips the rough wall with her fingertips hard
Till it hurts. She can’t reach the window.
Turning around she remembers her friend.

Faith has red hair and lives with her granny.
The woman is old like the little girl’s mum.
Unlike her, she smokes, and will die soon, of cancer.
The little girls played down here one week ago.

The child took her doll in an apple-box pram.
‘This is Mum’s baby,’ she told her friend Faith.
‘You’re a liar,’ said Faith, biting her on the shoulder.
Then the child knew they would not meet again.

Mum had said Faith was ‘illegitimate’.
The child was prepared to be that word too.
Dad lifted her once to see through the window.
A grey-coated man held a pink plastic leg.

‘That’s where they make limbs for soldiers who’ve lost theirs.’
The little girl knows some good uses for lies.
If truth is a thing that’s too hard to look at
A good lie’s a comfort, a smart pair of trousers.

page 99

Part 2

She scoots down the lane past the Bowling Club.
The green is hidden by another high wall.
Bowling’s a game played by white-clothed old people.
Will she wear white clothes and play bowls when she’s old?

There are jewels that she likes by the Plastics Place,
Bright heaps the other kids haven’t seen yet.
Today she is lucky, she picks up a threepence.
Lollies will help her to climb Pirie Street.

With her pocket of treasures she passes the Parthenon,
Legendary place, and so close to home!
Greek children go there to learn Greek. The child
Speaks fake Greek because it makes Mum and Dad smile.

Pirie Street is very steep. The little girl goes slowly up.
Faith doesn’t come out of her house.
The child gasps, her sweat trickles down.
When she’s nearly done, she gets to the top.

The long, smooth cruise down Brougham Street
Is worth the difficult struggle up.
Her muscles shake. ‘Just balance and ride,
Don’t lower your foot till you get to the Flats.’

The Ionian Flats are close to home.
No Ancient Greek comes out today.
She’s into her street, and the ordinary house
Opens its mouth and swallows her down.