Mum slashes the top off her egg, cleanly. This is something she learned from my grandfather—the man who introduced me to Kenneth McKellar and taught me how to fire an air rifle. Boiled eggs bring out the war stories in my mother.

 

‘Before we left Scotland your Granny and I used to share an egg between us...'

 

            I know this one. Because of the war there was rationing, and fathers away in Egypt and women and girls sitting at home sharing an egg between them. In my mind, I draw Mum and Granny sitting as stick figures at a wooden table on top of a globe of the world. They are still in Scotland. New Zealand is at the bottom of the map. After the top is off, Mum scoops out the white with a spoon and dips it in the little pool of salt and pepper at the side of her plate. The picture in my mind changes. The globe and the table swivel around until New Zealand is at the top and three heads bend over three eggs at the breakfast table.

 

‘We thought New Zealand was wonderful,' Mum continues, her spoon dipping and scooping so that the yolk breaks and spills over the rim. ‘Milk by the pint, butter by the pound, and plenty over for baking.'

 

Despite my grandfather's safe return from the War this is still the girls' story and Mum conjures all the domestic details— flour scattered like stars across the wooden bench, cubes of yellow butter, the quick wisdom of Granny's scone-making fingers and the smell of her tartan coloured biscuit tin (always full of New Year shortbread).

 

            Later—after I learned to cut the top off my own egg, and to scatter and weigh and bake scones, and after I stood beside Granny and Grandpa's graves on Christmas Day at Aramaho, and after I married a good First-Foot-looking man and moved to Western Australia—I looked back and realised that those warm kitchen memories were only half the story.

 

            My grandfather used to sing Kenneth McKellar at the drop of a hat. Old friends and family always said he was ‘a bit of a Joker', but they didn't mean it in the way that Kiwis or Australians do. Grandpa was just a very happy sort. And he taught me to fire an air rifle. It was the same day I asked him what it felt like to move to New Zealand. He didn't talk about himself. 

 

‘When we came to New Zealand your mother had a hard job settling in.'

 

            Those were his words. My grandfather's words. And then he showed me how to line up a shot, pull the trigger and send a pellet pinging into the target. I was a good shot and anything else Grandpa might have said that day was eclipsed by his excitement at my beginners luck. Kenneth McKellar favourites echoed impressively around the garden for the rest of the morning until Mum and Granny told him off.

 

‘For goodness sake pipe down Jock!'

 

            It was Marjorie who told me what really happened.

 

            Marjorie was Mum's best friend through High School, University and Teacher's College. Knowing what I know now I understand that it was a relationship built on mutually recognised outsider status. I know this because when I moved to Perth—already Marjorie's home for a decade—she and I met every year for a pre-Christmas tea at Myers. The year after Mum's death, I brought her my first baby asleep in the car seat. Marjorie rose like a queen, kissed us both and thrust a small bottle of Scotch into my spare hand. This I interpreted as a congratulatory gift, as Marjorie's sense of feminist propriety precluded her giving me chocolate or flowers. Adding a wee dram to our tea in Myers delighted both of us.

            

            When Marjorie met her at Southland Girls, Mum was a small round Third Former with thick glasses, thick plaits and a thick Scottish brogue. Marjorie had a brainy reputation from primary school, and Mum was fresh off the boat, so it was entirely natural that they gravitate towards each other. In studious situations—French and English—they became friendly rivals and in social ones they paired up with each other because no one else wanted to. 

            

            So, Marjorie and Mum paired up for Cooking and the day came for milk desserts. Miss McCleary, a tall woman with a large but finely shaped nose, looked down on her girls with approval as they worked quietly in pairs moving smoothly from sink to stove to work bench and back again. Half an hour into the lesson most groups had a double boiler ready on the stove and the milky-eggy mixture was beginning to thicken into custard.

 

‘We were the only fly in her ointment.' said Marjorie, ‘Neither your mother nor I could crack an egg to save ourselves.' 

 

So, Miss McCleary went back and forth instructing the hapless pair until it seemed as if ‘everyone was looking at us.'

 

            A little later Miss McCleary left the room.

 

            The winter sun was shining in on the class by now. Warm custardy condensation streamed down the inside of the windowpanes. The girls were hot and itchy in their woollen tights—restive and revolting. As Mum and Marjorie worked sluggishly to tidy their area, they felt a sibilance run around the class—heard a practiced chant:

 

Fat Scottish brat.

She looks like a cat.

Pull out her whiskers

and send her back.

 

            Next thing Mum and Marjorie were surrounded, pinned between their workbench and the sink. Mum looked to Marjorie for support and Marjorie looked to her, neither knowing what would happen next. ‘Margaret,' my mother's given name turned easily into ‘Maggot.'

 

‘Go on Maggot. Say world,' they taunted, waiting for the rolling ‘r'. 

 

‘Say worrrr-ld.'

 

            But Mum said nothing. And that's when it happened.

 

            In one fluid motion the girls tipped a bowl of warm custard over Mum's head so that she stood with the slimy milk pudding soaking into her uniform and oozing down behind her ears. 

‘Not one Scottish syllable escaped her lips,' said Marjorie, and I laughed with her about my mother's stubborn streak, though I felt like crying.

 

In that part of her life that she shared with me, I only ever heard my mother's brogue when she spoke on the phone to Granny and Grandpa. At these times my sisters and I would gather around her in fascination, sensing perhaps that this was the closest we would ever come to knowing who she was, before she became our mother. 

 

After she hung up the phone, we would try to persuade her to ‘speak Scottish—just for us,' but she never did.