Mud and Gold Page 29

  16

  October 1888 – August 1889

  On a mild spring day late in October, Lizzie opened her eyes and looked at Frank with recognition as he sat by her bedside.

  When his rush of elation had settled into a calmer happiness, Frank spent the afternoon mending the stretch of fence whose collapse had, in his eyes, marked the beginning of their troubles, and to which he had done no more than rig a temporary repair up till now. There would be no more falling down fences on his farm, he pledged to himself.

  It took many weeks for Lizzie to recover her full strength. All through her long convalescence, Frank hovered solicitously over her whenever he was not busy on the farm. As she became stronger Frank spent more and more time working, amazed at all the things he had left undone or done half-heartedly over the years. Even the weeds scattered through his paddocks, which he had always accepted as the natural state of the pasture, now seemed an inarguable sign of his neglect, and he set to work destroying them.

  Seeing how much Lizzie was fretting for the children, within a few days of her return to consciousness Frank insisted that Edie let Maudie come home, and he gladly took on the task of looking after her until Lizzie was well enough to get up. He soon gained new skills in feeding, washing and dressing little girls, but he reluctantly admitted that caring for a baby was beyond him. Amy gradually weaned Joey over the next few weeks, and by the time Lizzie was well enough to care for him Joey was ready for solid food.

  By autumn Lizzie was so well that it was hard to believe she had ever been ill. But the illness had left its marks. Her hair would take years to regain its former length, and it was months before she could easily pin it up under a bonnet. The weight she had lost was more readily replaced; Frank soon found he had a warm armful to cuddle again.

  The changes in Frank were not so visible, but they were deeper and more long-lasting. Never again would he take happiness for granted. It was something to be worked for, and to give thanks for every day. No longer did he surprise Lizzie by coming back to the house an hour or two before she expected; now she had to get used to keeping meals warm in the evening while she waited for Frank to finish some vital piece of work that simply would not wait until the next day. Whenever he had to go out he spent most of the time away from the farm thinking about what he should do when he got back.

  ‘Frank, you’ve gone mad,’ Lizzie complained one evening when Frank finally came in for his dinner half an hour after sunset. ‘I was beginning to think I’d have to come looking for you with a lantern.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of wasted time to make up,’ said Frank. ‘I’m going to make this farm pay.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you have to work all hours of the day and night! You’ll knock yourself out.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I’m just working hard for a change.’ He stepped up behind Lizzie as she stood at the range dishing up his meal, and slipped his arms round her waist. ‘I nearly lost you,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘I nearly lost my Lizzie. I’m never going to risk that again.’

  There was one resolution he found more difficult to keep. The first night he once again joined Lizzie in their bed, he told her very solemnly that it would be for the best if she did not have any more babies for some time; at least until she was back to her full strength. Lizzie agreed with equal solemnity, and explained that since she had had to stop breastfeeding Joey so early she would be likely to get with child almost at once if they did not take care. But they soon found that good intentions were no match for natural impulses. In March Lizzie told Frank there would be another child in November, when Joey would be barely eighteen months old.

  When he had got over the guilty awareness of his lack of self-control, Frank could not help but be pleased, especially as Lizzie was so delighted. He watched her anxiously for any sign of illness as her pregnancy advanced, but Lizzie bloomed as she swelled.

  *

  Late in the month John Leith startled his family with the announcement that he was going to get married. Not the news of the marriage itself; most of the population of Ruatane had been expecting to hear that was imminent for many months, ever since John had first started his frequent visits to the Carrs’. What caused such surprise was his choice of wife. No one was more astonished than Martha Carr when John went to see her father, not to ask for her hand but for her younger sister Sophie’s.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ Martha wailed to her mother. ‘He was meant to ask me! What’s he want her for, anyway? She’s fat.’ She was doomed to an unsympathetic hearing; after she got over the surprise, Mrs Carr was philosophical about having disposed of one daughter when all her efforts had been devoted to placing the other.

  Martha soon decided to make the best of it, especially once her mother had comforted her with assurances that it would be her turn before too long. Mrs Carr insisted Martha have a bridesmaid’s dress at least as elaborate as Sophie’s wedding gown for the April wedding; after all, as she told her husband, Sophie had already got herself a man. Making the most of Martha’s attractions was much more sensible.

  By the time of the wedding Amy was almost four months gone with a new pregnancy, and she fretted over whether or not she should attend. Desire to go to her brother’s wedding outweighed the worry that her condition might be visible; she comforted herself with the memory that at the same stage of her three earlier pregnancies she had barely shown. For a while it had seemed that nausea, far more violent and dragging on for longer than she was used to, might deny her the outing, but at last it subsided into mere morning sickness instead of attacking her all through the day.

  Lizzie’s baby was due two months later than Amy’s, so she had no such worries about appearing at the wedding. In fact, Frank would have found it difficult to keep her away from her first important social occasion since her illness.

  ‘Now, you’re sure you feel up to it?’ he asked as they drove to the Carrs’ house after the wedding service. ‘You just tell me if you get a bit tired, we can go home whenever you like.’

  ‘Frank, for goodness sake,’ Lizzie said. ‘Stop treating me like I was still sick. Honestly, I hardly even get the chance to talk to anyone when we go to town, you’re always in such a tearing hurry to get back to work. You needn’t think you’re going to do me out of a bit of fun today.’

  ‘I just don’t want you getting worn out. I’ll make sure there’s a proper armchair for you.’

  ‘Oh, no, you won’t! You can leave the armchairs for the old women, thank you very much.’

  Lizzie gathered up her two children and made straight for the corner of the parlour where most of the other women had congregated. She and Amy took full advantage of their chance to chat.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ Lizzie said, ‘is just how he ever got around to asking her. I mean, look at them now—have you even seen them speak to one another?’

  ‘No,’ Amy agreed, studying John and Sophie where they stood in the centre of the room, close by a table which Mrs Carr and Martha, helped by the Carrs’ oldest daughter Tilly, were busily loading more and more food on. ‘But I’ve seen them smile at each other a few times.’

  ‘Smiling’s all very well, but it’s a bit hard to propose like that. Now, if it had been Martha I could understand it. She would have asked him herself—either that or he would have asked her just to shut her up.’

  ‘Shh, Lizzie! Martha will hear you.’

  ‘No, she won’t. She’s not taking any notice of us, she’s too busy eyeing up all the men to see who she can chase after next.’ Martha was indeed showing no sign of feeling rejected; she was clearly making her best effort to be charming to any unattached young man whose attention she managed to catch.

  *

  ‘Well, that’s another of those girls married off,’ Mr Carr remarked to any of the men standing close to him who cared to listen. ‘It’s an expensive business, getting rid of daughters. You’ll have that one day, Frank.’

  ‘Hey, hang on! Maudie’s not even three yet,’ Frank protested with a la
ugh.

  ‘The time goes fast enough. Sophie’ll make John not a bad wife—she’s the best of the lot of them, really. She’s the only one who didn’t inherit her ma’s tongue, anyway. Can I pour you a beer, Charlie—oh, you’ve already helped yourself.’ He poured himself a mug instead, and topped up Frank’s glass.

  ‘Yes, she’s not a bad girl, is Sophie,’ he went on. ‘John won’t have got anything out of her, either, she’ll have kept herself decent. Her and Martha both, they’d never dare open their legs till they had a ring on their finger. Not after that trouble we had with Tilly.’ He glanced over his shoulder towards Tilly’s husband, a sullen-faced young man with an expression that said he wished he were elsewhere.

  ‘He’s a no-hoper, that one,’ Mr Carr muttered to his listeners. ‘Good at making babies, but not too keen on any other sort of work. He’s had jobs on half the farms around Katikati, he gets sick of it after a couple of months and tries another place. I’ll probably have to have the two of them here in the end. Well, if he plays his cards right he’ll get this farm when I’m gone. He reckoned it wasn’t his brat, but Tilly swore it was, and her ma believed her. She’s no soft touch, my old woman—if she believed Tilly, then it was the truth. She gave that girl a hell of a hiding when she found out there was a child on the way.’

  ‘Wasn’t it a bit late for that?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Too late for Tilly, right enough. But she made the other two stand and watch while she did it. I don’t know which girl was yelling the loudest by the time she’d finished. No, John’ll get his first go at Sophie tonight. I don’t know if he’s tried it on before, but she’ll have given him short shrift if he has.’ He looked across the room at Martha, who was taking animatedly to an amused-looking Bill. ‘Course, the trouble with Martha is, I don’t know if she’s got much chance of getting a husband bar using the same way Tilly did. She hasn’t got much going for her. She’s got her ma’s looks and her ma’s tongue, but she didn’t get her ma’s cunning.’

  Charlie downed the last mouthful from his mug and refilled it. ‘You wed the woman,’ he said, voicing the thought that Frank had kept to himself.

  ‘Well, we all do stupid things when we’re young. Don’t you go being so bloody smug, Charlie Stewart, not when you’re drinking my beer. Just because you scored that tasty little piece.’ He looked across the room at Amy. Frank saw Amy turn and stare back, then quickly look away, as if she had sensed she was being observed. Now that his eyes had drifted in that direction, Frank studied Lizzie, taking pleasure in the sight of her blooming health. She did not catch his eye, but she waved her new fan in a rather ostentatious way, making Frank smile even more broadly. ‘I don’t know how you did it, Charlie,’ Mr Carr said, openly envious. ‘The best looking bit of skirt in this town, and barely ripe when you got her.’

  ‘I’ll thank you to keep your eyes to yourself,’ Charlie said, fixing Mr Carr with a grim expression.

  ‘All right, all right, I’m just looking. I’ll leave the baby snatching to you. When you’ve got a looker like that, Charlie, you’ve got to expect to have her stared at. I notice you’ve got her with child again.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Charlie said with evident self-satisfaction.

  ‘You don’t muck about, do you? Making up for lost time, eh? What are you grinning about, Frank?’

  ‘What?’ Frank dragged his eyes back to his companions. ‘Oh, I was just thinking about Lizzie. She looks good, eh?’

  Mr Carr laughed. ‘Now, that’s the sign of a man who hasn’t been married long—a room full of women, and he’s only got eyes for his wife. She’s got over that bad patch all right?’

  ‘Yes, she seems really well now. I still keep an eye on her, try and stop her from overdoing things.’

  ‘My wife fed his son while his wife was poorly,’ Charlie put in. ‘My son was still on the breast then. But she had plenty of milk for two bairns, so I let her feed both.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Charlie, I think you might have mentioned that once or twice,’ Mr Carr said, rolling his eyes at Frank. ‘Maybe a few more times than that.’

  *

  Susannah glided towards Amy in her gown of bronze silk with brocade bodice, choosing a moment when Lizzie had gone to refill her plate. It was the dress she had worn on her first Sunday in Ruatane, but even now almost eight years later it still outshone any other outfit in the room.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, Amy,’ Susannah said in a low voice. ‘You’re showing.’

  All Amy’s pleasure in her outing evaporated in a moment. She looked down at the blue silk gown that had to do service as her only good dress. It was true that its close fitting style meant the dress was already uncomfortably snug. ‘I’m only just showing. I don’t think anyone will see. No one’s taking any notice of me today, anyway.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong about that. Your condition’s quite obvious.’

  Amy looked around the room, imagining all eyes on her in disapproval. She knew it would be no use asking Charlie if they could go home, not when there was so much free beer still to be drunk. ‘I can’t help it,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’d never get out of the house if I had to wait for a time when I wasn’t with child or nursing a new baby. I’m always in this state.’ She turned her back on Susannah and walked away to what she hoped was an inconspicuous corner.

  ‘Hey, I don’t think I’ve had a wedding kiss from you yet,’ she heard a voice behind her. Amy turned and saw John advancing on her while Sophie circulated among some of the guests.

  ‘Haven’t you?’ Amy put her arms around his neck and kissed him. ‘Congratulations, John. I hope you and Sophie will be really happy.’

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ John said. He glanced over to where Sophie was showing off her new wedding ring to an admiring audience, and Amy saw a complacent smile play around his mouth. ‘Sophie’s good. I tell you what, she’s looking forward to getting out of here. Martha’s been giving her a real hard time since she found out we were getting married.’

  ‘Poor Sophie,’ Amy said, at the same time wondering how John had managed to get so much information out of Sophie when Amy had rarely heard her say more than two words together. ‘But John, Martha might have been hurt, you know. I mean, she thought you were interested in her. I hope you haven’t been leading her on.’

  ‘I never touched her, if that’s what you’re getting at. I never said anything to her, either, bar “pass the salt” or that sort of thing. I can’t help it if her and her ma made things up.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ Amy agreed. ‘It’s just that everyone thought it was Martha you were after.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what Sophie said at first. She said Martha would make a heck of a fuss about it—that’s why it took me so long to talk Sophie round.’

  ‘John, Sophie seems to say an awful lot more to you than she does to anyone else.’

  ‘That’s because I shut up and let her talk. Do you think her ma and sisters ever gave her much chance to get a word in edgewise? Sophie mightn’t be the brightest, but she’s not as dim as people think.’

  ‘You’re not so slow yourself, John. Oh, I’ve got to ask, tell me to shut up if I’m being too nosy. What made you notice Sophie when you must have had Martha hanging round you all the time whenever you came out here?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ John said, the twinkle in his eye making it hard to judge how serious he was. ‘It was the first day I realised it was Sophie who was doing all the cooking!’

  *

  This pregnancy seemed more uncomfortable than any of her previous ones. After the nausea at last disappeared, Amy seemed to swell so rapidly that at times she wondered if her skin could stretch fast enough to hold her body in. She knew she was bigger than she had been when carrying the two boys; perhaps this would be an even larger baby.

  Maybe it’ll be too big for me. Maybe this will be the one that kills me. She thrust the brooding thought aside whenever it slipped into her mind. Self-pity was a luxury she could not afford.

 
But pregnancy had its advantages. Although it made every day an ordeal for Amy as she dragged her growing burden around, the way Charlie softened in his manner made up for much of the discomfort. Sometimes Amy could almost delude herself that he might be about to say something kind to her, or even show her some token of affection, though in her more sensible moments she knew that was too much to expect. But he tolerated her increasing clumsiness with only mild complaints, carefully refrained from hitting her when she was slow in serving his meals, and only rarely called her ‘bitch’.

  One evening in early July, when Amy was a little over six months pregnant, the two of them sat in the parlour in a silence that was almost companionable, the fire crackling cheerfully on the hearth. Charlie scanned the Weekly News idly while Amy sewed at an old pair of his trousers that was beyond mending and which she was cutting down for Malcolm. She glanced up and caught him looking at her with an expression so self-satisfied that it came dangerously close to being a smile.

  Charlie looked away and buried his nose in the newspaper before speaking. ‘Felt the bairn move much?’

  ‘Quite a bit. Not as much as Mal did, but about the same as Davie.’

  ‘Mmm. Another big, strong boy, eh? I might have to think about putting another room on in a couple of years.’

  When I have another baby. Won’t he ever let me stop? A faint cough, muffled by the intervening wall, dragged her thoughts from their fruitless course. ‘Mal’s nearly over that bad cough now. He’s much better since he’s been in his new bedroom.’ Distressed at the signs of illness in Malcolm, Charlie had readily taken up Amy’s hesitant suggestion that he make a new room by walling in half of the cottage’s verandah. Malcolm now slept there instead of in the chilly back bedroom that saw no sunlight all day. ‘The weather’ll be getting warm again when the new baby comes, so Davie should be all right in the back room till next year. He’s a bit too young to share with Mal yet, I think. We shouldn’t need another room for a while.’ Charlie grunted something that might have been agreement.