J.B. In Charge Chapter 12

We go to the fancy‑dress ball and Mum bakes a cake

The memory of that fancy‑dress ball remains with me like an unusually pleasant half‑remembered dream.

This one, unlike all the other fancy‑dress balls, had something very special. Many men of the district, the fathers of my school chums, were coming home from the war.

At this fancy‑dress ball, the grownups were happy as we kids were when the school year was over. Their happiness was infectious to us kids as were their worries. The gramophone belted out those funny dances. We skipped as if they were the best things on earth.

I joined up with Matiu who had come as an Apache. Then the mothers got up and did the hokey‑tokey. I was sure they were dancing the hokey‑pokey.

After that, some of the dads danced in a ballet, waving their huge arms and with stomachs bulging out of their tutus as they pretended to be graceful swans. We all screamed with laughter at their thumping except for their own kids who turned a bright red. Then Mauti's dad appeared on stage with a guitar and sang South Of The Border.

I won't talk about supper. Even the English language has its limits in some things. Then we all solemnly filed back into the hall for the school play. Mr Macgregor had written it. The curtain opened and there on the stage was Plurple as Bonny Prince Charlie and Winnie Wong as Flora Macdonald. We kids sang Over The Sea To Skye. Plurple and Winnie drew louder laughter from the grownups than from the kids when Winnie dressed Plurple in an Irish woman's dress to escape the English soldiers. They seemed to hold the audience in the palms of their hands.

I was delighted for my friend. In last year's fancy‑dress ball, I had been almost ill with mortification. Plurple had told us kids he would be coming to the fancy‑dress ball in the clothes of the country he had come from. Since he had come to our school, he had enchanted even the roughest boys with his stories of that place. There were dancing red dragons and stone lions and men dressed in blue gowns covered over with sparkling stars. When news had come that Plurple and his mum and dad had arrived in the hall, many of us had rushed to see him. Plurple had come in a cone hat, a pigtail and beard, a silk dressing gown and slippers!

Until that moment, we kids had not known that he and his parents had come from China! Winnie Wong's father was the only one delighted to see him. Everyone else ignored poor Plurple. He soon gave up the dances and sat down all night with his mum and dad. We then felt he had chickened out, and all despised him.

When the hall clock struck eleven, it was time to be home so we would not miss tomorrows milking. We swarmed out of the hall and piled into our gigs and cars.

I lay in bed and savoured that evening. I had met my school mates and their mums and dads and the teachers in a convivial place. There was more to life after all than more cows, more punishing teachers and more farm debts. School and home were not separate harsh planets but were one place full of the people I had known all my life. I breathed a happy sigh, turned over and drifted to sleep.

I dreamt morning had come and Mum was baking a loaf. She put the dough in the breadpan, and set it on the window sill to rise. It rose, and rose, and spilled out of the pan. Mum threw it out the window. Up, up into the sky it reached until the top of it was lost among the clouds. It was blocking the sun. We all ran out the door to look. I climbed on to Dad's shoulders. Aunty Fan put her arms around Brian. Lloyd George and his wives mooed and frolicked in excitement. Bruce swished his tail and barked. I woke up. It was the time for us to bring in the cows for milking.