A Second Chance (57 page)

He lifted his bright eyes to meet her gaze.
‘How do you know what it says?’

‘That’s what reading is. You learn letters,
then you learn how they join together into words.’

‘Can you show me how to do it?’

‘How to read?’ Amy said, startled. ‘Would
you like that?’

Eddie nodded.

Cool logic suggested she should tell him to
wait a few months till he turned five years old and started school.
Amy ignored it. ‘That’s a good idea, Eddie. I’ll draw you some
letters nice and big, and we’ll start tomorrow. And I’m going to
write back to Mama in a bit—I’ll help you do your name at the
bottom, so Mama can see what a clever boy you are. I think we’ll
use a pencil for that, though,’ she added, envisaging the mess that
would result from letting Eddie try a pen.

Eddie’s first effort at writing his name,
even with Amy guiding his hand, required the partiality of a
grandmother (or, Amy hoped, the mother who would receive the
letter) to be recognised, but she praised him for it, and was
rewarded with a beaming smile.

With Eddie so keen to learn, it seemed a
waste not to try and teach him while he was in her care. Amy was
careful to keep such lessons short; it was too much to ask a
four-year-old to spend more than a few minutes at a time working at
learning his letters. She soon found that when Eddie became
frustrated with a task, he could show flashes of temper that
recalled his father’s and grandfather’s. Fortunately he was more
easily calmed than either of them had been.

Beth, used as she was to younger brothers,
had an easy friendship with Eddie from the start, but Amy could see
David struggling over just how he should behave with him. Sometimes
he romped with the little boy as if he were a child himself,
clearly enjoying their play as much as Eddie did. At other times he
felt the need to show some sort of authority, and would try to tell
Eddie what to do, or scold him when he did not respond promptly to
one of Amy’s gentle requests. As Eddie ignored his instructions on
any subject other than horses, on which he considered David an
oracle, these attempts only made David uncomfortable while having
no discernable effect on Eddie. Amy did not intervene; she was
confident that David would, given time, realise he was wasting his
energy on someone whose will was stronger than his own. Eddie, Amy
could see, was a child better led by persuasion than command.

Milly wrote faithfully once a week; letters
that tended to be short and unvarying. Her work was going well; she
was saving her money (though Amy sensed that the amount was
building up more slowly than Milly had expected); she hoped Eddie
was being a good boy. She made much of Eddie’s gradually improving
attempts to write his name, and of the drawings Amy sometimes had
him do for his mother. And she ended each letter with a hug for
him, which Amy was only too happy to pass on.

It was clear that Eddie was going to be
staying with them for some time, and after the first month Amy’s
fund of stories was running low. None of her own books seemed
suitable for a small boy, so she wrote to Sarah, explaining the
situation and enclosing a few shillings. A short time later a
well-wrapped parcel arrived, and Amy opened it to find several
small books with pictures of animals, dressed in human clothes, on
the covers. A note from Sarah enclosed with the books explained
that she had taken the advice of a bookseller, had been told these
were quite new and very popular, and trusted that they would be
suitable.

Eddie was entranced by the books, demanding
to have them read to him night after night until Amy knew the
simple stories by heart. When he asked if there were squirrels on
the farm, she had to tell him the disappointing fact that there
were none in the whole of New Zealand.

Eddie was not downcast for long; instead he
turned his attention to the animals available to him. He searched
the house for mouse holes, and prowled through the vegetable garden
looking for rabbits, but there was no chance of finding such
creatures in an entire state anywhere near the house; Pip, Beth’s
cat, was too good a hunter for that.

When Eddie tried talking to Pip, he suffered
nothing worse than a dignified silence, but when he tried dressing
the cat in one of Daisy’s knitted jackets, Pip showed his disgust
by leaving a trail of bleeding claw marks on the back of Eddie’s
hand before making his escape.

‘Animals in stories aren’t like real ones,
Eddie,’ Amy told him as she cleaned the blood from his hand. ‘You
can’t dress them up. It’s just pretend.’ She dabbed away without
comment the tears that had spilled onto Eddie’s cheeks. He was not
a child who often cried, and on the rare occasions when he did, he
usually tried to hide it.

When Beth and David came in, Beth was
clearly torn between amusement and sympathy, with amusement gaining
the advantage once she had seen that Eddie’s wounds were not
serious. She fussed over his scratched hand, gave Pip some extra
scraps to soothe his wounded pride, and repeated Amy’s advice that
real life cats would not submit to being dressed, whatever stories
might say.

‘Davie tried the same thing with Ginger when
he was little,’ Amy remarked. ‘He put a baby’s dress on him.’

This time Beth did not bother to hide her
amusement. She demanded all the details, and laughed aloud as she
heard the story.

David did not seem to find much humour in
it. ‘I don’t remember that,’ he said huffily.

‘Well, you were only little,’ said Amy.
‘Littler than Eddie—I think you were only three.’

‘Fancy trying to rock him in the cradle,’
Beth said through a fresh burst of giggles. ‘It’s a wonder he
didn’t bite you.’

David scowled. ‘Anyway, you shouldn’t go
opening people’s drawers and helping yourself to stuff,’ he said to
Eddie.

‘I didn’t open no drawers,’ Eddie said,
unabashed. ‘That jacket thing was just lying on the bed.’

‘I was thinking about putting it in the
ragbag,’ Beth said. ‘Maisie was trying to teach Rosie to knit, and
it turned out with one arm longer than the other. I don’t want to
put a funny-looking thing like that on Daisy, especially with all
the nice things Sarah sent her. Eddie’s welcome to it.’

‘Well… he shouldn’t have done it,’ said
David. He gave Eddie a stern look, which was ignored.

*

Whenever the weather was fine enough, Amy
made sure that Eddie spent much of the day outside. After having
lived up till now in a series of rented rooms with no place more
inviting than the street to play in, he delighted in running around
the paddocks, climbing trees, and using the rope swing David made
for him.

Once the paddocks were dry enough for a long
walk, Amy took him to visit her old home. Her brothers and their
households welcomed Eddie as part of the family, with their
children cheerfully accepting the arrival of another cousin. They
were all older than Eddie, and all at school, so could not be
playmates for him, but he was a self-sufficient child, used to
having only the company of adults.

And with the discovery of books and stories,
he was showing every sign of a vivid imagination. When Amy was
working outside and Eddie was playing nearby, she would often hear
him talking away quietly to himself, though he seemed unaware that
he was doing so. If she was close enough to make out the words, she
usually found that Eddie was telling himself a story, something
featuring himself and Daisy and, invariably, a horse.

Considering Daisy’s limitations as a
playmate, Eddie seemed to find her surprisingly good company. When
they both happened to be in the house at the same time, he would
often chatter away to her, and Amy almost had the impression that
he garnered some meaning from Daisy’s gurglings. He would sometimes
sit beside her with one of his precious storybooks and “read” to
her, as he insisted on calling it, though it was clear that he was
telling the story from memory, with his own embellishments. Daisy
showed every sign of delighting in the attention, whatever she made
of the stories.

When the year’s batch of calves were born,
Beth showed Eddie how to teach them to drink from a bucket, and he
appeared to enjoy the novelty. But he showed no interest at all in
the adult cows. After milking resumed, David took him down to the
cowshed one afternoon while Beth was busy with Daisy, but he sent
Eddie back to the house before the task was over.

‘He was playing up,’ David said when he
arrived back himself. ‘I could see he’d be upsetting the cows if I
kept him there much longer.’

‘Cows are stupid,’ Eddie grumbled.

‘No, they’re not!’ Beth said, visibly
shocked. ‘They’re clever, in their own way. Especially the
Jerseys.’

‘But they’re no
use
. You can’t play
with them or get them to do anything.’

‘They pay the bills and put food on the
table,’ David said, but this was too abstract a notion for the
little boy. David shook his head as he studied Eddie’s obstinate
expression. ‘I don’t think we’ll make a farmer out of you.’

He smiled as he said it, but Amy was
suddenly reminded of Malcolm and his contempt for farm life. Had
Eddie inherited her own desire for a wider world than the valley
could offer, just as his father had?

While Eddie found cows boring, his
fascination with horses grew with his experience of them. Only bad
weather excused David from what Eddie considered his obligation to
give a daily riding lesson. He was as fearless as Malcolm had been.
If he took a tumble (though this had become rare), he would pick
himself up and at once demand to be hoisted back onto the horse. He
could already walk and trot the patient old horse that David was
using for him to learn on; in spite of his pleas, Amy had forbidden
any attempt at teaching him to jump.

‘He’s going to turn out a better rider than
I am,’ David said, watching Eddie urge the horse into a trot. ‘Just
like Mal was.’

David insisted that Eddie learn to tend the
horses as well as ride them, and in this he had no problem getting
Eddie to obey him. They made a comical sight as they groomed the
horses together, the little boy standing on tiptoe to reach as high
as he could before stepping back to let David finish the job. David
showed him how to clean the tack, which he had to lift down from
its hooks for him, and was endlessly patient with his clumsy
attempts. Eddie would self-importantly stride along beside David
when it came time to feed the horses, fondly imagining that he was
carrying a useful share of the weight of a feed bag.

August came and went, with a small
celebration to mark David’s twentieth birthday. The weather grew
finer, Frank spared some time from his own tasks to work on the new
house with David, and Amy found that they had built in part of the
verandah to make a third bedroom.

‘You’ll be using the other room, so we’ll
need it for Eddie,’ David said when she asked him about the
addition.

No more was said on the subject; it was
clear that David and Beth felt that Eddie was not likely to return
to his mother any time in the near future. And that Amy was no
longer planning to move to Auckland.

Milly still wrote regularly, and her letters
still had the same forced cheerfulness. Eddie might not be fretting
for his mother, but she was certainly fretting for him.

September arrived. Eddie had been with them
for almost three months. Amy had sensed from Milly’s last few
letters that something was on her mind beyond her usual
preoccupation with her work and with Eddie’s wellbeing. A line
would be crossed out mid-sentence, followed by an abrupt change of
subject to something as innocuous as the weather.

The month was half over when David came back
from town one day bringing a letter from Milly somewhat longer than
her recent ones. Eddie had run out to help with the horse and cart,
leaving Amy to open the letter while Beth put the jug on. She read
the first few lines, and gave a sharp intake of breath.

The noise caught Beth’s attention. ‘What is
it, Aunt Amy?’

Amy stared at the words to see if she had
somehow misunderstood them. But Milly’s message was plain enough.
She looked up from the letter to meet Beth’s concerned gaze.

‘Milly’s got married.’

‘
Who to?’ was Beth’s first
question.

‘Someone she met at the hotel, I think she
said. I’ll read it all properly—don’t say anything to Eddie,’ Amy
added, seeing that Beth was about to call David and Eddie in for
their afternoon tea. ‘I’ll need to think out how to tell him.’

She tucked the letter away in her apron
pocket, and left it there till she had the room to herself. Then
she unfolded both sheets of paper and placed them on the table.

Milly, the letter informed Amy, had married
a man called Sidney Carter.
He’s very nice,
the letter said.
He’s a fair bit older than me, but he’s a good, steady bloke,
and I think he’ll be a good provider.
She had indeed met Mr
Carter at the hotel, where he had been an occasional guest.
I’ve
told him about Eddie, and he says I can have him with us, but to
leave it for a bit till we’re settled
. It seemed there was some
discussion as to just where they might live; Milly’s new husband
had for the moment rented a room in Tauranga for the two of them,
but it might suit him to set up house somewhere out of the town.
Don’t tell Eddie just yet
, she said, much to Amy’s relief.
Not till I know when I’ll be able to send for him
.

Amy turned to the second sheet of paper.
There were only a few lines on it.
It’s not like being with Mal
was,
Milly had written.
But you can’t expect to have that
twice in your life, eh?
She ended the letter with her usual hug
for Eddie, but instead of signing it off with the familiar “Milly”,
she had carefully written “Amelia Carter”. Amy put the letter away
in her top drawer. It was not something to leave lying around for a
casual observer; especially with its tender references to
Malcolm.