Mud and Gold (32 page)

Frank sat down heavily at the table. ‘Three
of the cows got out,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Into the tutu, and
Patches fell down a bank. Two of them dead, and Pudding only just
alive—I think she’ll pull through. I had to shoot Patches.’

Lizzie sat down beside him, too shocked to
speak straight away. ‘Two dead,’ she breathed. ‘That’s awful.’

‘Three calves lost, too. Pudding’s sure to
lose hers. Two cows and three calves, and all I’ve got to show for
it’s a couple of hides. A few shillings’ worth if that.’

‘It’s such bad luck!’

‘No, it’s not,’ Frank said bitterly. ‘It’s
my fault. I was bloody lucky the whole lot of them didn’t get
out.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Lizzie protested. ‘How’s
it your fault?’

‘Because I didn’t mend that fence—I knew it
was ready to fall down. Your pa gave me enough hurry ups about it.
I was just too damned lazy.’

‘Two cows and three calves,’ Lizzie repeated
anxiously. ‘What are we going to do, Frank?’

Her obvious distress brought Frank to his
senses abruptly. ‘Hey, don’t get upset, Lizzie. We’ll be all right,
it’s just a bit of a blow. I’ve still got plenty of cows. I’m
mainly wild with myself for being stupid.’ He tried to laugh, but
it came out as more of a snort. ‘I don’t know what your pa’s going
to say when he finds out.’

‘Don’t tell him,’ Lizzie answered smartly.
‘He’ll only go on and on about it if you do, you know how bossy he
is. It’s none of his business, anyway.’

‘I’d just as soon not tell him,’ Frank
admitted. He smiled at Lizzie, who had completely regained her
usual assurance. ‘I’m glad I’ve got you. Things never seem so bad
with you around.’

‘Things’ll seem even better when you’ve got
a decent lunch inside you.’ Lizzie wrinkled her nose at him. ‘You
really do stink. Go and get changed, you’re not going to sit at the
table in that state. And don’t you dare put those trousers in the
wash basket to stink the room out,’ she called after him as Frank
headed towards the bedroom. ‘You can throw them in the porch.’

Lizzie had been easily reassured, but there
was a nagging uneasiness in Frank’s mind over the next few days.
When spring came, the milk yield would be even lower than the
previous year’s. Perhaps he should have kept a few of the calves
last season. But there was no sense worrying about it now. They
would still have plenty to live on, and Lizzie was a careful
housekeeper, not given to waste.

By early August most of the cows had
produced healthy calves, though Frank was disappointed at how few
of them were heifers. But when he took his little family into town
for shopping one Thursday, he was too busy feeling proud of them to
think about much else. Lizzie recited her list of groceries, giving
Mr Craig the storekeeper just enough time to fetch each item to the
counter before she reeled off the next, while Frank watched her
fondly. Joey lay in her arms, blissfully unworried by Lizzie’s
rapid movements as she strode back and forth in front of the
counter keeping an eye on Mr Craig. The baby looked around the
store, apparently taking a great interest in his surroundings when
Lizzie kept still long enough for him to fix his attention on any
one object.

‘Papa?’ Frank looked down to see Maudie
tugging at his trouser leg. ‘Lollies, Papa?’

She tilted her head to one side, showing off
the tiny pink bow Lizzie had tied in her hair, and cast a fetching
smile at her father. Frank bent to pick her up so she could see the
row of sweet jars lining one end of the counter. ‘You want some
lollies, Maudie? What sort do you want?’

‘She can have a halfpennyworth, that’s all,’
Lizzie said from the far end of the counter. ‘See you wrap that
baking powder properly, Mr Craig, I don’t want it spilling. No
sticky toffees, Frank, she’ll make an awful mess. No big
gob-stoppers, either, she might try and swallow them whole. A bag
of sugar, and that’s the lot, I think—no, not that one, the big
size. Oh, I’ll have some sultanas, too. She can have one lolly now,
put the rest of the bag in your pocket, Frank.’

Frank sat Maudie in the buggy contentedly
sucking on a sweet, and left Lizzie to finish off the shopping and
supervise the loading of their supplies while he crossed the road
to the bank. He wanted to get a little cash, and it was about time
to settle his account at the store, too.

He wandered into the Bank of New Zealand, a
vague smile on his face as he thought about Lizzie and the
children, and he hardly noticed that the smile of welcome the bank
manager gave him was rather strained.

‘Frank, how are you?’ Mr Callaghan greeted
him. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while.’ He went on without waiting for
a reply. ‘Ah, would you mind popping into my office for a
minute?’

Frank followed Mr Callaghan, wondering what
the manager could want. Mr Callaghan sat him down and closed the
door before taking a seat behind his desk.

‘How’s the family?’ Mr Callaghan
inquired.

‘They’re great,’ said Frank. ‘Joey’s really
thriving, he’s big for his age, Lizzie says. And that Maudie, she’s
a real hard case. Never stops talking, either. You know what she
came out with the other day? Lizzie was—’

‘That’s good to hear, Frank,’ Mr Callaghan
interrupted. ‘You’re quite a family man now, eh? Is the farm going
all right?’

‘Pretty good,’ Frank said, feeling a
momentary rush of guilt about the cows that had died. ‘Prices
haven’t been that good the last few years, but we get by. You know
how it is.’

‘Yes. I know how it is,’ Mr Callaghan
echoed. He sat and looked at Frank but said nothing for a few
moments. ‘Times are hard all over the country, Frank. They’re hard
for banks, too, even though everyone thinks the banks are
rich.’

‘I suppose that’s right,’ Frank agreed,
wondering what on earth this had to do with him and how soon he
would be able to get away. Lizzie had whispered to him not to be
too long; Joey was getting restless and would be sure to want a
feed soon.

‘It’s Head Office, you see. They’re telling
all the little branches like us to wake our ideas up. I’ve been
letting things drift a bit, I must confess.’

Frank made what he hoped was a sympathetic
noise and looked blankly at Mr Callaghan.

‘That loan of yours, Frank. The one Ben took
out against the farm. You haven’t paid anything off it for a
while.’

‘Oh. I suppose I haven’t,’ Frank admitted,
struggling to recall just when he had last made a payment. Mr
Callaghan had given him an occasional friendly reminder over the
last few months, he remembered, but Frank had somehow not got
around to doing anything about it.

‘Not for over a year, actually. You’ve only
ever paid ten pounds off it.’

‘Have I?’ Frank said guiltily. ‘Well, you
know, there always seems to be something that needs buying, what
with the little ones. I sort of had to get a buggy now we’ve got
the two of them, the cart wasn’t too good. Maybe the milk price’ll
be better this season.’

‘Maybe. I hope so, Frank.’

‘Yes, it’s sure to be. Well, I’d better
be—’

Mr Callaghan raised his hand to wave Frank
back into his seat. ‘Wait a moment, I’ve something to give you.’ He
picked up a sheet of paper from his desk, holding it as though it
burned his hand. ‘I don’t want to do this, Frank. I’ve got to. Head
Office says I must with all the slow payers.’

Puzzled, Frank reached out to take the
letter, which was addressed to him and written on the bank’s
letterhead. He began to read it, then looked up from the page and
stared at Mr Callaghan in consternation. ‘It says you’re going to
take my farm off me!’

‘Believe me, that’s the last thing the Bank
wants to do. We don’t know anything about running farms. The Bank
wants you to get yourself straight, that’s all.’

‘But it says if I don’t pay you’ll take the
farm off me. I can’t pay! I haven’t got two hundred pounds.’ The
bleak picture of being turned off his farm with a wife and two
children to provide for made him feel physically ill.

‘One hundred and ninety, plus interest,’ Mr
Callaghan corrected absently. ‘Frank, you don’t have to pay it all
off at once. The letter says you have to satisfy the bank that you
intend to make good your debt.’

Frank grasped at the straw of hope being
held out to him. ‘How do I do that?’

‘Just make a good, solid payment by the end
of September. That’ll keep Head Office off my back.’

‘That’s less than two months. How much do I
have to pay?’

‘Seventy-five pounds would do it.’

Frank shook his head. ‘I can’t do that. I
can’t get seventy-five pounds.’

Mr Callaghan looked weary. ‘Fifty, then. I
think I could keep them quiet if you paid fifty pounds—it’s a
quarter of the loan. I’m sorry, Frank, that’s the best I can do for
you.’

‘And if I don’t pay that you’ll take the
farm away.’

‘Let’s hope it won’t come to that.’

Frank shoved the letter into his jacket
pocket and rose unsteadily. He walked out of the bank without
speaking again, and made his way to where Lizzie and the children
waited in the buggy.

August 1888

Lizzie did not seem to notice Frank’s
quietness on the way home. She was busy soothing an increasingly
fractious Joey until they reached a quiet spot out of town and she
could put him to the breast, then she chattered away about the
people she had spoken to in town. Frank let her voice wash over
him, not taking anything in. Even when Maudie slipped her little
arm through his and snuggled against him he hardly noticed.

He thought back to the time when the couple
who had owned what was now Charlie’s farm had lost it to the
mortgage men. Frank had been only a child then, but he remembered
hearing the adults talk about it in hushed voices. It had seemed
the most dreadful thing possible. Was it going to happen to
him?

He couldn’t let it happen. Frank spent most
of the afternoon walking around the farm, trying to work out how he
could raise the money. It would mean selling all the new calves, of
course. And maybe he could manage with one less horse, though it
would mean working the remaining ones harder. He would have to ask
the storekeeper if he could leave paying his bill for a while. On
top of that, if he turned all the milk money over to the bank he
might just be able to do it. But that would leave nothing to live
on.

Well, they would just have to live frugally
till the money was sorted out. Even then, he was not sure he would
be able to scrape together fifty pounds in time. If worse came to
worst, he would have to swallow his pride and ask Arthur for help,
but things would have to be dire before he would admit to his
father-in-law that he could not provide for Lizzie. In the
meantime, there was no point worrying Lizzie about it.

His mind was so busy running the problem
over and over that Frank had trouble doing justice to his dinner,
especially the mountain of pudding that Lizzie put in front of
him.

‘Eat up, Frank,’ she encouraged, looking up
for a moment from spooning food into Maudie’s open mouth. ‘I made
that sultana pudding specially for you, I know it’s your
favourite.’

‘Yes, it’s nice,’ Frank said, toying idly
with his spoon.

‘You’d better eat it—I paid a fortune for
those sultanas. Sevenpence a pound if you please! I gave that Mr
Craig a piece of my mind, I don’t mind telling you. I only bought
enough for this pudding—six ounces, it takes, and I made him weigh
them out just right. “I’m only buying these because I promised my
husband I’d make his favourite pudding tonight, Mr Craig,” I told
him, “so I’ve got to get enough for that. But you needn’t think I’m
buying any more while they’re that price.” That fixed him!
Sevenpence a pound, indeed! He must think we’re made of money.’

The food sat like lead in his stomach,
though it was the turmoil of his thoughts and not Lizzie’s light,
fluffy pudding that made Frank feel ill. He pushed the bowl away.
‘I don’t want any more, Lizzie.’

‘You’d better finish it. Honestly, if we’re
going to be ruined paying those prices for food you’d better enjoy
it. Eat that up and don’t be silly.’ She pushed the bowl back
towards him.

‘I said I don’t want it!’ Frank shouted,
shoving the bowl away roughly.

Lizzie dropped the spoon she was holding.
She and Maudie both stared at Frank in astonishment. ‘All right,
I’m sorry I spoke. There’s no need to bite my head off.’ Frank
turned away and looked at the far wall, but he was all too aware
that Lizzie was studying him closely. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she
asked. ‘What’s got you in such a sour mood?’

‘Nothing.’ He met her eyes and tried to
sound unconcerned. ‘I’m sorry, Lizzie, I didn’t mean to yell at
you. I’ve just got a few things on my mind, that’s all. It’s a
really nice pudding, I’ll have some more. Hey, don’t be scared,
Maudie, Papa’s not wild really.’ Maudie smiled, at once reassured,
but Lizzie continued to look at him oddly. Frank knew he would have
to be more careful if he wanted to keep his worries a secret.

*

Amy managed to snatch a brief visit two
weeks later, hitching a ride on Charlie’s spring cart when he took
the milk to the factory. Lizzie greeted her warmly enough, but
there was a tight look around her cousin’s mouth that had troubled
Amy the last few times she had seen Lizzie.

‘I’ll put the jug on,’ Lizzie said when they
had settled the children in one corner. ‘You don’t mind not having
any biscuits, do you? I haven’t got all that many.’

‘Want a bikkie, Mama,’ Maudie piped up.

‘No, Maudie. You can have one when Papa
comes back,’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s no good pulling faces, either. You
can’t have one now and that’s that.’ Maudie gave her a wounded
look, which Lizzie took no notice of.