Mud and Gold (55 page)

It took them more than three hours to
finish, and Amy was exhausted by the time they let the last cow
back into the paddock. She had no idea where Charlie would have
moved them after milking; they would have to stay where they were
until he finally appeared. She and Malcolm carried a can of milk
between them as they walked up to the house. She hoped Charlie
would wake up before it was time for the afternoon milking; she had
no desire to see him before she had to, but she did not think she
would be able to cope with a second session that day. All she
really wanted to do was lie down and sleep; though that was out of
the question. She was already behind with her work for the day.

When they got near the house she saw a small
plume of smoke rising from the chimney. So he was up, and had lit
the range. At the thought of facing him, her grip on the handle of
the milk can slackened. ‘Watch out, Mama, you’re spilling it,’
Malcolm said, bringing her attention back to their burden. She took
hold of David’s hand as they went into the house, and held it
tightly.

Charlie was in the kitchen, sitting at the
table with a mug of tea cupped in his hands. She saw that he had
hacked the remains of the previous day’s loaf into rough slices.
The spoiled bread dough lay in front of him, cold and pale like a
dead thing. He looked up as they walked in. When he saw the state
of Amy’s face he winced and turned away.

The boys rushed over to him, full of their
own importance, while Amy carefully lifted the heavy can onto the
bench.

‘Papa! We milked the cows!’ David
squealed.

‘Mama milked them, you mean,’ Malcolm
corrected him. ‘But we got them in the yard, and I tied them up,
and we carried the milk. Didn’t we, Mama?’

‘Of course you did, and I couldn’t have
managed without you.’ Amy ruffled his hair, and gave David a
squeeze. She was avoiding Charlie’s eyes as much as he was avoiding
hers.

‘Are you sick, Papa?’ David asked.

Charlie flinched at the boys’ high-pitched
voices. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Mama said you were,’ Malcolm chimed in.
‘She said you had to stay in bed because you were sick. That’s why
we
had to milk the cows—us and Mama.’

‘Stop your blethering,’ Charlie grumbled.
‘Keep quiet or leave the room.’

‘But we haven’t had any breakfast!’ Malcolm
said. ‘I want breakfast.’

‘I’ll make you something,’ Amy said. ‘You
two sit down and wait nicely.’ They sat and looked at her
expectantly, but she suddenly felt overcome with weariness and sank
into a chair herself. ‘I’ll do it in a minute. I just want to have
a little rest first.’

‘But I’m
hungry
,’ Malcolm wailed.

‘So am I,’ David added, not to be left
out.

‘Don’t speak at the table
,’ Charlie
thundered. He lashed out with his fist. Malcolm was unlucky enough
to be near him, and he caught the blow on the side of his head. Amy
rose, scooped both boys off their chairs and put an arm around each
of them. She stroked Malcolm’s hair as he buried his face in her
apron and forgot to be grown-up.

She led the boys over to the door. ‘Go
outside and play for a while—it’ll be lunch-time quite soon,
anyway. Wait a minute.’ She went to one of her cake tins to fetch
them a handful of biscuits each. ‘There, that’ll keep the worms
quiet.’ She was rewarded with smiles from both boys, though
Malcolm’s was rather watery. Cakes for breakfast were an unexpected
treat. ‘Take an apple each, too,’ she called out the door after
them.

She turned back to Charlie, unable to put
off talking to him any longer. ‘They’re just tired,’ she said.
‘They were up late last night, and they’ve worked very hard helping
me with the cows. They’re not really being naughty.’ She sat down
again, not wanting to stay in the room with him but too weary to
leave. Her head was throbbing, and she ached all over. On the floor
close to her feet, she saw the marks of the blood that she had only
managed to clean up in a cursory fashion the night before.
My
blood. My baby’s blood
.

‘They’ve got to learn to do as they’re told.
I’ll not have them prattling at the table. You shouldn’t have done
it,’ Charlie said, still not looking at her.

‘Shouldn’t have done what?’

‘Milked the cows. You should have woken me
up.’

Amy stared at him in blank amazement. ‘Woken
you up?’ she echoed. She gathered her thoughts and answered
carefully. ‘I didn’t wake you up because I thought you wouldn’t be
very pleased to be disturbed. I didn’t want to… annoy you.’

‘It’s
my
job to milk them,’ Charlie
said, sounding more distressed. ‘
I
should have done it. You
had no business doing it. You’ll have upset my cows with your
flapping skirts, too.’

‘Does it really matter, Charlie? It needed
doing, and I did it. I’m sorry if I’ve annoyed you, and no doubt I
didn’t do it very well, but the cows were bellowing and I was too
scared to wake you up.’ She had not meant to admit her fear, but
the words slipped out before she could call them back.

‘You’d have no reason to be scared if you
behaved yourself,’ he grumbled. ‘You push a man too far with your
nonsense.’ She said nothing; she was not going to apologise for
having been beaten. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t wake up,’ he
fretted.

Because you were blind drunk, of
course.
‘I expect you were tired.’
Beating me like that must
have taken a lot of energy
.

‘I didn’t hear you get up.’

Now it starts
. ‘No. I wasn’t
there.’

He looked at her, shocked. ‘You didn’t… stay
out here?’

‘No, I didn’t lie on the floor all night,’
she said bluntly. ‘I slept in David’s room.’
Did you really
think I’d crawl into bed with you after that?
She shifted on
her chair, trying to find a position that did not hurt so much.

‘Sit still, woman! Stop squirming like
that.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She apologised out of habit,
and was at once vexed with herself. She rose to leave the room.

‘Where are you going? I’ve made some tea.
Drink it,’ he ordered.

Amy sat down obediently, and poured herself
a cup without thinking. But when she put the hot china to her cut
lip, she gasped and lowered it, slopping a little tea in the
saucer.

‘I can’t drink this,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘My lip’s too sore. I’ll have some when it’s
cooled down.’

‘Eat something, then,’ he said, pushing the
plate of bread towards her. Amy shook her head. ‘Why not? You’re a
bag of bones now—you’ve got to eat, woman.’

‘I can’t eat that. It’s too hard.’

‘You don’t need to use your lip to eat
bread! Shove it in your mouth.’

‘I can’t.’ She put her hands on her lap, and
found again the small lump in her apron pocket.

‘Why not?’

‘Because of
this
,’ Amy flared, taking
the teeth in her hand and thrusting them in front of his face.

There was a moment’s shocked silence. ‘Did
I…’ Charlie said uncertainly.

‘Yes, you did.’ She put the teeth back in
her pocket.

He rose unsteadily and walked to the door.
When he reached it he turned and looked at her. ‘You behave
yourself and it maybe won’t happen again.’

No, it won’t happen again
.

*

All Amy’s work took twice as long because of
her injuries. She knew she would only be able to do the essentials
for many days. The floors would have to stay unscrubbed, the rugs
unbeaten, and there would not be as many cakes as usual; butter
making, too, would have to be abandoned for the moment. She could
only bear to carry half-full buckets of water, so fetching it took
twice the normal number of trips. There would be no chance at all
of weeding her vegetable garden; she would just have to hope that
the plants were well-grown enough to survive the neglect. Doing the
work that could not be avoided was going to be hard enough when
lifting anything heavy meant agony, and twisting her body to reach
shelves or lift pots from the range sent shafts of pain through her
bruised flesh.

Charlie came back from the afternoon milking
to find her moving David’s things out to the verandah room, David
imagining that he was helping her as he trailed along getting
underfoot.

‘What are you doing?’ Charlie asked.

‘Davie’s old enough to sleep out here now.’
Forcing her voice to sound casual, Amy added, ‘I’m going to sleep
in his room.’

Charlie nodded. ‘That’s for the best, until
you’re well again. You’ll be yourself in a few days.’

It’s not just for a few days
. But she
said nothing, postponing the confrontation while she could. She
wanted to build up as much strength as possible before the battle
began.

‘I took the boy milking with me,’ Charlie
said. ‘He behaved all right. He’s old enough to make himself useful
around the place.’

‘Yes,’ said Amy. ‘Mal’s growing up. He was a
big help to me yesterday—you were, too, Davie,’ she added, seeing
his hurt expression. ‘You’re a bit too little to go milking every
day, though.’

‘He’ll grow up fast enough,’ Charlie said.
Amy had to resist the urge to remonstrate. She did not want to lose
her baby boy before she had to; especially now she knew there would
be no more babies.

Malcolm came in swaggering with
self-importance.

‘I’ve been helping with milking,’ he said.
‘You were slow this morning, Mama—it’s much faster when Papa does
it. Milking’s man’s work,’ he added, standing close to his father
as he parroted him. Amy turned away from the sight. Today Malcolm’s
startling likeness to his father was hard to bear.

Malcolm was still boasting about milking and
doing ‘man’s work’ when Amy put the boys to bed that evening. ‘Papa
won’t take you, you’re just a baby,’ he said to David.

‘I’m not a baby!’

‘Why won’t Papa take you, then?’ Malcolm
countered.

David could not come up with any argument
against this, and his lower lip trembled. Amy gave him a hug.

‘Never mind, Davie, you can help me, can’t
you? Shall we go and look for blackberries tomorrow, if Mama feels
a bit better?’ His face lit up at this. The walk would be
uncomfortable, and she could not really spare the time to go
blackberrying this early in the season, but Amy couldn’t bear to
see the little boy looking unhappy.

Despite her aches, Amy slept better that
night than she had in years. To sleep without fear of being roughly
awakened seemed a great luxury; she felt almost guilty for enjoying
it so much. But she needed her sleep. She needed to get strong.

Amy’s bruises deepened in colour over the
next few days. Her swollen eye subsided a little, but her face
still looked appalling three days later when Sunday arrived. It was
clear to both her and Charlie that she would not be able to appear
at church that morning.

‘Now, you be a good boy for Papa,’ she told
Malcolm as she watched Charlie hoist the boy up to sit in front of
him on the horse. She waved them off, hoping Charlie would not be
too impatient with Malcolm, and relieved that he had been so easily
persuaded to leave David at home with her. Her little David had
never yet felt his father’s wrath at its most frightening; she
would hate him to get his first beating while she was still too
frail to comfort him properly.

But Charlie looked no more sour than usual
when he and Malcolm returned, and Malcolm had clearly enjoyed the
adventure of riding with his father. Amy sent the boys outside to
get rid of Malcolm’s pent-up energy while she worked on the midday
meal. Charlie stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her going to
and from the range for some time before he spoke.

‘People asked after you,’ he said, an uneasy
note in his voice. ‘I had to say you were poorly.’

‘That was true enough, Charlie. I’m not
exactly feeling well.’

‘They thought I meant you were with child. I
could see them thinking it.’

‘Let them think what they like. It doesn’t
matter.’

‘Your pa…’ The uneasy note was stronger.
‘Your pa said he might call in and see you before lunch.’

Amy dropped a pot lid heavily. ‘Oh, I hope
he doesn’t. You should have told him not to.’

‘What could I have said? And don’t you go
ordering me around, woman—telling me what I should and shouldn’t
say. He maybe won’t come, anyway.’

But Jack did come, striding across the
paddocks and up to the back door of Charlie’s house, beaming in the
anticipation of seeing his daughter happy, healthy and swelling
with new life.

‘Where are you, girl?’ he called from the
doorstep. He came into the kitchen, full of the familiar smell of
roast mutton, without waiting for a reply. ‘I thought I’d just pop
over and see how—’ He stopped abruptly when he saw Amy standing at
the far end of the table. ‘No,’ he said in a voice scarcely above a
whisper. ‘What’s happened to you?’

Amy put down the plates she was holding and
rushed to him. ‘Shh, Pa, it’s all right,’ she soothed, as if she
were talking to a child. ‘Don’t get upset. Here, sit down.’

She led him to a chair. He sat at her
urging, staring at her face in dumb horror. Amy took a seat close
to him. ‘I know I look awful, but you mustn’t get upset. It looks
much worse than it is—you know how faces are for swelling up if
they get a bit of a knock.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Jack said, finding his voice
again at last. ‘I don’t know how women’s faces are when they’ve had
a man’s fists slamming into them. It’s not a sight I’ve seen
before.’ He reached out to brush his fingers over her swollen eye
and bruised cheeks. Amy could not help flinching at his gentle
touch. ‘Where is he?’ Jack asked heavily.

‘Over the back somewhere. Keeping out of
your way, I expect.’ She took his hand in both of hers. ‘I’m all
right, Pa, really I am. I wish you hadn’t seen me like this, but
you mustn’t worry about me.’