Mud and Gold (2 page)

She looked up at her old home, and
immediately regretted having done so. She saw a dim, yellow light
in the parlour window; it looked homely and familiar, and she could
picture her father sitting in his comfortable armchair, smiling at
her. She had never yet seen a smile on the face of this stranger
who walked beside her with such an awkwardly long stride. Even
Susannah seemed familiar and safe. Amy suddenly realised that she
had not kissed the little boys good night. She wondered if Thomas
would ask for her when he woke up in the morning.
I won’t be
there if he looks in my room. I’ll be in Charlie’s room
.

They turned off the valley road and onto a
track leading up to the house. Charlie barely slowed his pace as
they climbed the hill. Amy’s bundle was uncomfortably heavy by the
time they reached the cottage.

She could just make out the shape of the
building, a shadow against the dim sky. Charlie went up to the
small porch. Amy heard the rattling of a handle, followed by a
creak as he pushed open the door. She stood at the foot of the
steps and waited to be asked into his house.

Our house.
My house—a house of my
own. This is what I’m supposed to want
.

‘Come on,’ Charlie said from the doorway,
turning away as he spoke.

Amy climbed the steps and entered the house.
It seemed pitch dark after the lingering dusk outside, but she
guessed she was passing through the kitchen. She followed Charlie
through a door on the opposite wall, a few steps across another
room, and through an open doorway. Charlie lit a candle. By its
flickering light Amy saw she was in a bedroom. His bedroom.

The room was tiny, dominated by the bed.
There was a wardrobe; a chest with five drawers, a cut-down
kerosene tin on it serving instead of ewer and basin; and a chair
beside the bed. Amy stood just inside the doorway, clutching her
bundle and waiting to be told what to do next.

Charlie placed the candle on the chest of
drawers, its light casting a looming shadow behind him. He turned
to face Amy.

‘I want you to understand a few things from
the start,’ he said. ‘Then there won’t be trouble later. I expect
to be obeyed in my own house. I won’t have arguments or talking
back. Your shame will never be mentioned—I’ve given you an
honourable name, and I’ll not bring up your past against you if you
behave like a decent woman. You are never to speak of your bastard.
Understand?’

Amy felt her face burning. She could only
manage a nod.

‘I’ll have your word on that. Swear to me
you’ll never raise the subject.’

‘I… I promise I won’t.’
Ann. I’m not
allowed to talk about you. He can’t stop me thinking about you,
though
.

‘See that you remember. I don’t want to have
to speak of this again. You’ll be wanting to get ready for bed
now.’

Oh, God, he’s going to stand there and
watch me get undressed
.
I can’t do it. Not with him staring
at me
. But Charlie took something from a drawer and went back
out to the other room, closing the door behind him.

Amy took off her precious hat and placed it
on the chest, well away from the candle, then slipped the pins from
her hair to let it tumble down over her shoulders. She undressed as
quickly as possible, tugging at the laces of her stays with clumsy
fingers, and pulled on her nightdress. What to do with her clothes?
Leave them draped over the back of the chair? That seemed slovenly.
She shoved them into her bundle and placed it on the chair; tonight
was not the time to explore the drawers and wardrobe.

She heard the door open, and scrambled into
bed. It smelt musty, as though the bedding had not been aired in a
long time. Charlie came through the doorway wearing a long
nightshirt and thick woollen socks. He bent over the candle to blow
it out, and Amy heard the blood pounding in her ears. She lay very
still, listening to his heavy tread on the bare wooden floor, then
felt the bed sink as he climbed in. What would he expect of her?
Jimmy’s soft words and careful urging seemed a long time ago.

Charlie took hold of her shoulder with one
hand, while the other pulled up her nightdress. The fabric twisted
awkwardly as he tugged at it, and Amy felt it cutting into her
thigh. She gasped at the shock of his weight as he heaved himself
onto her and forced her legs apart.

Pain stabbed through Amy, burning and
rasping with every thrust. She might have cried out from it if she
had not been struggling for breath under the crushing load of the
body bearing down on hers. The bed swayed and creaked, and Amy held
herself rigid, clutching at the sheet beneath her fingers.

It didn’t last long. Charlie heaved himself
off her and rolled away. When his snoring told Amy he was asleep,
she slid closer to the edge of the bed and curled herself into a
ball. Her shoulders hurt from the grip of Charlie’s hands. One
thigh was stinging where her nightdress had dug into it. And up
through her centre a line of pain throbbed.

The room seemed full of the smell of
unwashed sheets and of the man beside her. The house creaked from
time to time, as it gave up the last of the day’s heat. Amy lay
trembling, and trying to make no noise as she wept.

This was more horrible than she could have
imagined; worse than anything in her life except losing her baby.
It was worse than losing Jimmy, worse than hurting her father. She
had tied herself to this man. There was no escape.

In the early hours, Charlie roused and came
at her again, hauling her onto her back as she scrabbled to lift
her nightdress out of his way. It lasted much longer this time. Amy
lay awake through what was left of the night, too terrified to
move.

Charlie stirred as dawn broke. For a moment
Amy thought he was going to take her again, with the added ordeal
of having it happen in daylight, but he pushed back the covers and
sat up. He stared down at Amy with something like astonishment. She
knew her face must betray the hours of weeping, and she tried to
turn away. But he grasped her chin in his hand and forced her to
look at him.

‘What the hell’s wrong with you? Trying to
play the bashful virgin? It can’t have come as much of a surprise.’
Through the fear raking her, Amy was dimly aware that his promise
not to mention her ‘past’ had not survived the night.

He got out of bed, turned his back on her
and got dressed. This morning he would make no attempt to spare any
modesty she might have. ‘Straighten yourself up and get out to the
kitchen,’ he growled. ‘I expect my breakfast on the table when I
come in from milking.’ He stomped out of the room. A moment later
she heard the back door slam.

That bed held no temptation for her to
linger. Amy eased herself out from under the covers and stood up
carefully, her legs trembling as she put weight on them. A smoky
old mirror hung on the wall above the chest of drawers. She peered
into it and grimaced at the face that stared back at her:
red-blotched, swollen, and surrounded by a tangle of hair.

‘There’s no sense in grizzling over what you
can’t change,’ her grandmother had always said. Granny had had a
saying for every occasion. Charlie might have defeated even her
determined optimism, but she was right about things that couldn’t
be changed. ‘Things always look brighter in the morning’ had been
another of her sayings; Amy looked at her own puffy, tear-streaked
face in the mirror and found herself unable to agree.

She splashed her face with the small amount
of water that was all the kerosene tin contained, drying herself on
her nightdress as there was no towel. She untied her bundle and
retrieved her hairbrush, along with some underwear and a badly
creased work gown and apron. Her hair took much painful tugging to
get into a semblance of order, but Amy felt stronger when she was
dressed and tidy. She gave her face one last inspection in the
mirror, checking for any traces of tears. Weeping annoyed Charlie,
so there had best be no more of it.

Laundering the linen and giving the blankets
a much-needed airing would have to wait till washing day, but at
least the bed looked tidy when Amy had made it. That done, she made
herself look in the chest, and was relieved to find the lowest
three drawers were empty. No need to disturb Charlie’s things. Her
clothes only took up two of the drawers, and she jammed her books
and bedspread into the third one. There was enough space in the
wardrobe next to Charlie’s clothes for her dresses, and the shelf
above was just high enough for her hat.

Exploring the cottage took only moments. The
bedroom door led into a tiny parlour, sparsely furnished with a
sofa and a pair of old armchairs. The kitchen opened off the
parlour, and another door led from it into the cottage’s other
bedroom. Those four rooms made up the house.

The kitchen faced west, and was cool and dim
in the early morning light. It had a big, black range, which struck
Amy as rather new-looking, set into one wall, with a small stack of
wood beside it and an iron kettle on the hob; two or three
saucepans and a frying pan hung on hooks above the range. A heavy
wooden table and four chairs stood against the opposite wall. There
was a small dresser with a few plates on it in front of the third
wall, and against the last one stood a rough wooden bench with
another cut-down kerosene tin and a chipped enamel bowl on it.
Beside this bench were some food bins and a few shelves. The room
was tidy enough (it was too bare to be otherwise), but the floor
showed half-swept traces of dirty boots, the range had obviously
not been cleaned at all during its short life, and the pans had had
only cursory attention from the scrubbing brush.

‘That’s what a man calls clean!’ She could
hear Granny saying it now with a disgusted sniff. In Granny’s
opinion men were incapable of performing any household task
satisfactorily. Charlie obviously fitted the mould; though Amy
thought back to the state Frank’s house had been in when she and
Lizzie had visited, and she wondered if Charlie had, in fact, made
an effort to tidy up.

Well, she was used to cooking and cleaning.
And it would be nice to have her own kitchen again, even though she
was going to have to spend days getting everything cleaned up. But
the first task was to prepare Charlie’s breakfast. Amy did not know
how many cows he had, so had no idea how long he was likely to take
over milking.

A side of bacon hung from a hook in the
ceiling, there was a plate of dripping on one of the shelves, and
Amy found knives in a drawer of the sideboard. The eggs would still
be under the hens, so she would have to go searching for them.

She found a large, wooden barrel at one
corner of the house, and was pleased to think she had found the
water supply. But when she looked inside she saw that its base was
rotten, so any water that fell into it from the guttering simply
trickled away. There would be no water from that source.

Amy disturbed a sitting hen under a tree
close to the porch and retrieved two warm, brown eggs, but she had
to search under hedges all around the house before she had gathered
six, which she carried carefully back to the house in her
apron.

Finding the eggs had taken longer than she
had expected, and Amy began to get flustered. She had to have
everything ready before Charlie came back, and he surely couldn’t
be much longer. She ran through the tasks in her head: put the
kettle on to boil, fry the bacon, then keep it warm on the side of
the range while she fried the eggs. Water! There was none in the
kitchen, she had used the last few drops from the tin in the
bedroom, and the rain barrel was useless. Did she have time to go
searching for the well? Did she dare not have a pot of tea ready
for Charlie? She decided it was more important to get the food
ready; she could fetch water while Charlie ate if necessary.

Amy knew she should sweep the previous day’s
ashes from the range’s fire box before using it, but it seemed
safer to leave that till after breakfast. The next blow came when
she attempted to light the range and found there were no matches.
She hurriedly searched the kitchen for them without success. Had
she but known it, the matches were at that moment in Charlie’s
pocket as he sat in the cow shed. In desperation, she opened up the
fire box and found that a few of the embers were still glowing; she
spent a valuable few minutes coaxing these into flame using some
newspaper and blowing at the cinders. Her face was hot and she was
short of breath by the time she had a fire going.

There was no time to let the flames settle
down to the steady heat she needed, so she just threw the bacon
into a pan with some dripping and hoped for the best. The fat
hissed and smoked, and the bacon became badly singed around the
edges before she had time to pull it off the heat. She shoved the
pan to one side, and broke the eggs into another pan with more
dripping. Clumsy with nervousness, she managed to break the yolks
of four of the eggs. She watched in dismay as the edges of the
whites burned while the yolks of the unbroken eggs remained
uncooked. Suddenly overcome with weariness, Amy felt tears starting
from her eyes.

It was at this moment the back door opened
and Charlie came in, carrying a billy of milk. He stared at the
scene: a kitchen full of smoke, bacon half blackened and half raw,
a pan containing something that might once have been eggs, and in
the midst of it all Amy standing with tears streaming unchecked
down her face.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t find—’Amy’s words
were cut off when Charlie lashed her face with the back of his
hand. She fingered her tender cheek in shock while he stood over
her, glowering.

‘I thought you’d be competent in women’s
work, not a useless, whining child! Is it too much for a man to ask
a bit of breakfast when he’s been up labouring since dawn? Are you
capable of boiling a kettle? Is there a pot of tea ready?’