Owls Do Cry Read Online Free Page B

school blazer with a monogram.
    But Francie Withers is Joan of Arc, and she sang at the garden party –
    Where the bee sucks there suck I
    In a cowslip’s bell I lie,
    There I couch when owls do cry.
    When owls do cry, when owls do cry.
    But not any more there I couch when owls do cry. There are owls in the macrocarpa and cabbage trees and they cry quee-will, quee-will, and sometimes at night because of the trees you think it is raining for ever and there will be no more sun, only quee-will and dark.
    But the day, for Francie, left school, will be forever, with them all having breakfast and their father going to work, smelling of tobacco and shaving soap and the powder he sprinkles on his feet to stop them from becoming athletic.
    —What shift, Bob?
    —Late shift, Amy. Home at ten.
    But very often he did not call her Amy, only Mother, or Mum, as if she really were his mother.
    And she would call him Father, or Dad, as if in marrying him she had found another father.
    Besides Francie’s grandad.
    And besides God.
    —Yes, late shift, Amy. Home at ten.
    —Oh Dad, you’ll never get your sleep in.
    —If I’m off tomorrow I’ll fix the waste pipe.
    —It needs fixing.
    —Of course it needs fixing. Haven’t I told you time and again not to put grease and stuff down it?
    —I’ve been emptying the dishwater outside, on the roses, to keep the blight away.
    —You didn’t last night.
    —I forgot, Dad.
    —Good Lord, is that the time? Make sure you keep those kids away from that rubbish dump, they’re the talk of the town, them going and playing in all that rubbish, strikes me they can’t tell what’s rubbish from what isn’t rubbish.
    —Yes, Dad.
    He almost kisses his wife then, and is gone, wheeling his bike around the corner, and Amy stands looking after him. She wipes her hands on her wet apron, it is always wet, a wide patch of wet where she leans over the sink to wash the dishes.
    She thinks for one moment, because she is romantic, of herself and Bob and the time he courted her and sang to her, what was the song –
    Come for a trip in my airship
    come for a trip midst the stars,
    come for a spin around Venus
    come for a trip around Mars;
    no one to watch while we’re kissing,
    no one to see while we spoon,
    Come for a trip in my airship
    and we’ll visit the man in the moon.
    And when they walked down Waikawa Valley, as close to the moon as possible, they met the old Maori running from the ghosts and he called out, Goodnight Miss Hefflin, only he said it like Heaven, and she laughed.
    Perhaps Amy thinks for a moment of this, or is it only in books, where cried-for moons are captured, that they think this way?
    And then the children are off to school and the littlest one plays in the backyard, that’s Chicks, chicken because she’s so small and dark; and Francie’s there, who’s not small but twelve, thirteen after Christmas, but left school now to make her way in the world and get on.
    And be part of the day that is forever.
    And it is quiet now for Francie. She thinks, now the girls at school will be marching in for prayers. A new term has begun. The headmistress will be standing on the platform and raise her hand, not for silence because it is hushed already but because she likes to raise her hand that way. She is big, with a head shaped like a bull and no neck to speak of and you can never see what she is wearing under her gown because it wraps her close like a secret. She is standing, in majesty, before the school and saying Good Morning, girls.
    And then it is the National Anthem and the headmistress welcomes everybody for a new term, singing with them, or opening her mouth like singing,
    Lord Behold us with thy blessing
    once again assembled here
    onward be our footsteps pressing
    in thy love and faith and fear
    still protect us still protect us
    by thy presence ever near.
    —The Lord, the headmistress says, after the Amen, is very very close.
    And she wraps her gown more secretly about her body.