Mateship With Birds - By Carrie Tiffany Page 0,28

There’s a gentleness about it too.

Michael, and later Betty, also stand quietly at the door and admire the snow. Betty buys Harry a new pillow at the co-op as a replacement although he insists he used an old one and has no need of it.

Harry comes around a bit those school holidays. He often has to borrow something or return it. Sometimes Little Hazel pretends Harry and Sip are formal guests and shows them through to the front room where they drink tea together and read books. They look at a pictorial gazette of the New Age of Transportation Little Hazel borrowed from the school library. There are pictures of modern cars and trains and aeroplanes. One of the pictures shows a gigantic car ferry that travels between England and France. A huge mechanical ramp leads to the inside of the ship where cars of different models are lined up, some with picnic baskets tied to their roofs. Well-dressed families stand around the cars, the children are bare-legged but in the fitted coats and socks-with-sandals of the foreign rich.

‘Young Sip here would like to go to France on a car ferry,’ Little Hazel says lazily, stroking Sip’s ears. Sip hears her name being spoken. She blinks in recognition and licks her needley teeth. Harry and Little Hazel laugh at her so she gets up haughtily and takes herself over by the window where there is a patch of sun.

When Harry comes the next day, Little Hazel tells him that she dreamed about the ferry. In the dream Betty’s Vauxhall is in the hold of the ferry and Betty has forgotten to put the handbrake on (not unusual) so all night, as the passengers sleep in their bunks above, Betty’s car has rolled backwards and forwards with each sway of the ferry. Betty’s car hits the car in front of it, and then the car behind it, until the force of this loosens the brakes of all of the cars, causing them to slide into one another like marbles on wet glass. In the dream Harry and Betty and Little Hazel and Michael are having breakfast in the ferry’s grand dining room with tinkling chandeliers and runny eggs. Only Little Hazel knows the carnage that awaits them as soon as the ferry docks and the gigantic ramp is let down. She wants to warn her mother, but her mouth is stuck with egg. And there’s a stranger at the table with them – a woman who looks a bit like Michael’s friend Dora, but has the wrong hair. Whenever Little Hazel tries to speak this woman interrupts.

‘I woke up feeling as if something bad will happen and I’m not going to be able to stop it.’

Harry makes a noise at the back of his throat. A calming noise he makes when the calves are frantic for their bottles.

‘Do you think I should tell Mum?’ Little Hazel asks. Her face is red. She sniffs and rubs her nose.

Harry puts his hand on the girl’s shoulder. Then he takes a handful of hair that’s fallen from her ponytail and tucks it back behind her ear. ‘It’s alright,’ he says. ‘Settle, petal. It’s alright there.’

At school number 2502, Cohuna, Little Hazel’s teacher sets aside fifteen minutes on a Friday afternoon for the class to write up their nature diaries. There is a prize at the end of the year for the best diary, with marks awarded for composition and illustration. The boys are doing a comic strip – Eagle Versus the World. Out of all of the boys only one of them can draw. Little Hazel brings pressed leaves and flowers from home and traces around them on the page, but they break apart and it takes too long to colour in the outlines, so she writes. She takes some advice from Harry and she tries to write what she sees.

HAZEL REYNOLDS’

NATURE DIARY

February

When we came back to school we moved into the top classroom. There is a bird table outside the window. We take turns filling up the dishes with water and birdseed. Already there have been rosellas a butcher bird and a thrush.

It was a very hot day to-day. There were 17 magpies on the grass outside the window. At lunchtime our teacher put the sprinkler on and in the afternoon there were 63 magpies on the grass. It looked like they were having a conference.

The thrush comes to the bird table all of the time. Our teacher can get very close to