Mud and Gold (39 page)

‘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.

‘Charlie,’ Amy said carefully, gambling on
his mellow mood. ‘It might… it might be a girl this time.’

Charlie dropped the paper on his lap and
looked at her in astonishment. ‘A girl? What do I want with a girl
child? What use would that be on the farm?’

‘No use at all, I suppose. But it might be
one anyway. I’ve had two boys now, it can’t keep on being boys
forever.’

‘I never thought of it being a girl child.
Do you think you’re carrying a girl?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think you can tell. I
just wanted to sort of… well, warn you. I hope it’ll be another
boy, really I do.’ And it was true. A girl would try to take the
place in her heart that would always be Ann’s, and Amy feared she
would resent the child instead of giving her the love she deserved.
It had been hard enough learning to love Malcolm; if she had a
daughter she could not be sure of winning the struggle.

‘A girl,’ Charlie repeated. His look of
amazement slowly faded as the notion settled into his mind. ‘Well,
I suppose there’s no harm if this one’s a girl,’ he said at last.
‘There’s plenty of time for more boys. If it’s a girl you can name
it,’ he added as he took up his newspaper again.

‘Thank you,’ Amy said in surprise. It was a
gift; the only one he had ever given her, and Amy at once felt she
wanted to give him something in return. She thought for a moment,
then asked, ‘What was your mother’s name, Charlie?’

‘Eh?’ He looked up from the paper, and a
faraway expression spread over his face. ‘Her name was… Margaret.
Yes, that was it, Margaret. Maggie, they used to call her. I
remember her standing in the doorway and calling out to me to come
in for supper, holding a wee bairn in her arms. She was tall and
straight, and she had blue eyes. And they killed her,’ he ended
bitterly.

Amy gave a start. ‘Wh-what? Who killed her,
Charlie?’

‘The bloody English,’ Charlie spat. ‘Called
themselves Scots—called themselves clan chiefs—they never came near
the Highlands till they decided to play farmer. There was only one
sort of clansman they wanted, and that was the four-footed
clansman.’

‘What’s a four-footed clansman?’

‘Sheep. Bloody Cheviot sheep. That was the
way to make easy money—run thousands of sheep on the hills. Only
trouble was, there were people on that land. Good, honest
clansmen—my father’s family had worked that land time out of mind—
and loyal to the chief—my mother and father both had grandfathers
out in the ’45.’ That meant the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, Amy
knew; though she suspected Charlie would not allow it to be called
a rebellion. ‘That lot weren’t going to let that stop them. “Pack
your belongings and get out,” the steward said. Then him and his
men set fire to the cottages so there’d be no going back—never even
gave us time to get our things out before they threw in the
torches. There was one old woman still in hers when they burned it,
I remember my father saying. Our land. It was ours, and they took
it away from us,’ Charlie said in a voice raw with outraged loss.
‘My father had no bit of paper to say it was his—the lairds had the
paper. They kicked us off our land as if we were animals—no, they
treated animals better. They treated the sheep better! Every time I
cut a ewe’s throat I tell myself it’s the Countess of
Sutherland.’

Amy shivered at the force of his hatred as
he spoke about things she had scarcely even heard of, despite her
own Scottish blood. History at school had meant English history,
and had rarely strayed north of the border; certainly it had never
discussed anything critical of the country most of Amy’s classmates
were taught by their parents to call ‘Home’. Part of her wanted to
stop him before he got himself in too much of a state, but the
story held a horrible fascination. ‘What did your family do? Where
did you go?’

‘We walked. We carried what we could—what
we’d pulled out of the cottage before they torched it. My mother
carried the little girl, and my father and me what our backs would
bear. We walked and walked. I don’t know how far, or how long it
took. I only remember the walking, sleeping in the fields at night,
my father putting his coat over Ma and the girl when it rained. She
was far gone with child, bigger than you are now.’ He frowned in
thought. ‘She seemed old. She was grey and worn-looking, and bowed
down instead of erect like she used to be. She can’t have been as
old as all that, though, not to be still bearing.

‘We got to some port. I don’t know where it
was, my father never spoke of it after. We got to within sight of
it, then her pains came on. Too early, she said it was, but the
walking was too much for her. She lay down in the dirt of the road
and cried out with the pain. There were other women, they helped
her. Someone took me off, but I could still hear her. For a while,
anyway.’ He fell silent.

‘The poor, poor woman,’ Amy murmured, hardly
noticing the tears streaming down her face. ‘You must have been
very young.’

Charlie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Five or
six, maybe. They said some dirt got in her, she got some childbed
ailment with a fancy name.’ He gave a bitter snort. ‘Not that she
had a bed to give birth in, nor one to die in. She died in a field
by the road. Some woman took the baby, but it only lived a
day.’

‘So you and your father—and your little
sister—left Scotland?’

‘Aye. There was nothing for us there any
more. We went to Canada, the whole village on the one boat. The
girl died on the way. She wasn’t strong enough for that boat.’ He
shuddered at memories he chose not to speak of. ‘There was work in
Canada, and the chance of land. Cutting forests, that was good work
for a strong man. Till one day the blade slipped in the sawmill.
Took off my father’s arm, and he bled to death while we
watched.’

‘Oh, Charlie! Who looked after you? Who took
care of you?’

‘Care?’ he repeated, looking puzzled. ‘I
didn’t need anyone to take care of me. I must have been ten or
eleven by then. Old enough to do a man’s job—for a boy’s wage.’

Still a child
, Amy thought, tears
coursing down her face.
With no one to cuddle him when he got
scared at night, no one to talk to about the things that upset him.
Oh, Charlie, no wonder you don’t know how to play with the
children. No wonder you don’t know how to be gentle
. ‘It’s a
long way from Canada to Ruatane,’ she said softly.

‘A hell of a long way. Took me twenty-five
years to do it. Twenty-five years of living rough, wherever there
was work to be had and a chance of putting a bit of money aside.
Across Canada, down through California, then worked my passage to
Dunedin. Cutting stone blocks for building—that’s work for a strong
back. Fencing, digging the roads, whatever paid the best. Hauling
loads to the gold-fields, there was money in that. I made my way
north bit by bit—I heard there was land to be had in these parts,
good land for a man not scared of hard work to break it in. Took me
another five years working in the sawmills and the mines before I
had enough money. No time to think about getting a wife, and no
women in most of those places—not the sort you marry, anyway. Then
it seemed to be too late,’ he said, looking pensive. ‘But I got my
land,’ he went on, fire in his eyes again. ‘This farm is mine, and
I’ve the bit of paper to say so. No one’s ever taking it off me or
my sons. I’ve got sons now,’ he said triumphantly. ‘This land is
ours forever.’

His eyes focussed on Amy instead of into
some unseen distance, and he appeared to become fully aware of her
presence for the first time since his diatribe began. ‘You were
just a wee mite when I got this place. A plaguey brat you were for
a bit, you and that cousin of yours running wild on my land. But
you blossomed,’ he mused, his eyes on her in a way that made Amy
grateful for the bulkiness exempting her from his demands. ‘You
blossomed, all right.’

Amy sat in silence as she tried to absorb
the magnitude of all he had said. ‘I’m glad you told me all that,
Charlie,’ she said at last. ‘I wish you’d told me years ago.’

‘Why? What’s it got to do with you?’

Amy looked away to hide the hurt.
I’m
your wife, aren’t I?
‘You should tell the children about it
when they’re old enough to understand. It was their grandparents,
after all.’ She felt the hard bulge of her belly under her hands
and thought about the woman who had been Charlie’s mother; the
woman made old and grey before her time. ‘And if this baby’s a
girl,’ she said quietly, ‘I’d like to call her Margaret.’

*

The weight dragged at Amy more and more as
the weeks passed and she grew bigger. The simplest task became a
trial, and the heavier work such as washing became almost too much
to bear. But it had to be done, so she struggled on.

On a Monday early in August, with six weeks
still to go before the nine months would be up, Amy was taking the
dry clothes off the line while David toddled about near her feet.
Every time she reached up for a piece of washing a sharp pain
stabbed under her ribs, and she had wait for it to subside before
she could carry on.

David tugged at her skirt. ‘Mama,’ he said
excitedly. ‘Tommy coming!’

Amy looked in the direction he was pointing
and saw that her little half-brother was indeed making his way up
the track towards them. ‘Hello, Tommy! What are you doing here?’
She held out her arms, and he let himself be embraced. He tried to
put his own arms around her, but when Amy let him go he stepped
back and gave her a puzzled look.

‘You’re fat, Amy. You’re much fatter than
Sophie.’