and the banjos and the beer—anything up to a couple of days it'd last, intermittently, and tomorrow the children would be dull-eyed, drooping over their desks, untidier, more unwashed than usual. She though back to earlier times, other parties, when she and her husband were new to it, and more horrified. ‘Who gets your meals for you, Rangi?’ she had asked. ‘Who looks after you when there's a party?’ ‘We all right, Miss. We get a bread.’ The children thought nothing of it. They were used to having to forage for themselves. But she and Trev—they never got used to it. They were filled each time with a furious disgust, in turn with the moneymaking publican, the happy-go-lucky Maoris, the whole setup of decrepit housing, dirt, and neglect. Hope nothing happens tonight, she thought uneasily. If only I could get off to sleep. Did I lock up the school? I can't remember. The pumphouse door rattled free of its catch, and began to bang. With taut nerves she lay listening for each succeeding crash, waiting for it, dreading it like an expected physical pain. Like having a baby, the thought came. Her mind wandered over the empty house, counting the children who had never come to fill it, wondering what it would have been like not having to teach, no primers to struggle with, that new one, now, that Ra, she was going to take some watching. A stronger gust made the house tremble, whipped the lilac to a new frenzy and filled the air with a confusion of sound. Above the high roaring, the smack and bang of branches, the wooden crash of the pumphouse door, there came a new sound, faint and uncertain, approaching, withdrawing, like dancers in a gavotte. In a sudden lull it came clear and strong—the sound of a bell. She sat up with a start. Who could be ringing the bell at this hour? One, no, two o'clock by the faint glow of her watch. She got up wearily, groping for slippers and snatching an old coat of her husband's from behind the door. The moon came out as she crossed the playground; it seemed to be looking back over its shoulder at the scudding clouds. The school door stood open, and from the direction of the infant room came the subdued clang of the bell. She walked quickly down the corridor and flung open the door. The bell clattered to the floor, rolled a little with lolling tongue and lay mute. ‘Ra! Whatever are you doing here at this hour?’ She surveyed the crouching figure with mounting exasperation. Those crayons again! What they wouldn't do to get what they wanted! ‘You were after teacher's crayons again, weren't you? You naughty little girl. Come here. Give them to me.’ Ra eyed her warily out of wild brown eyes. She said nothing. ‘Quickly now. Do as I tell you.’ No sound, no movement. ‘Oh, you exasperating child. Let me see!’ But there was no sign of a crayon anywhere. The pocket of the far-too-big pyjama jacket was quite empty. Just as well, thought the woman, another few minutes and the child would have been embarked on a career of petty crime. These parties! No wonder the children got themselves into trouble, roaming all over the place at two in the morning. She picked up the silent child, folding the flapping jacket more warmly about the little bare seat, and set off up the road. As they drew near the Pungas', the music grew louder. Joe Punga was sitting on the doorstep, crooning over a bottle and shouting blurred comments over his shoulder. He waved the bottle amiably as they passed. ‘Have a drink, Miss,’ he offered, not a bit surprised to see her trudging up the road at that hour with a child in her arms. She glared at him in silence, and past him at the teetering dancers weaving back and forth across the doorway. Soon she turned off the road and followed a rough path across the paddock, her footsteps startling half a dozen black pigs which rose grunting from among denuded stalks of cabbage. Cabbages! They planted cabbages and then left the fences gaping for the pigs to get in. She would never understand them. The shack was in darkness except for a wavering candle on a box by the bed. Two of

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