Mud and Gold (62 page)

But it was not Lizzie who precipitated Bill
into action. The two groups of people responsible never realised
what an effect they had had, and in the case of one pair would have
been furious had they been told.

It was Mrs Carr and her daughter Martha who
gave Bill the first push. After leaving him in relative peace over
the winter, Mrs Carr began badgering him with invitations to dine
at their house that became more and more difficult to refuse
politely. On each of these occasions, usually outside church but
sometimes at the store, Martha would be standing nearby fixing Bill
with what she seemed to imagine was a winning smile and giggling
foolishly. She would then launch into a long, prattling tale about
someone’s wedding or new baby, before pressing her mother’s
invitation on him.

With such a contrast before him, Bill could
not help but appreciate Lily’s quiet voice and the way she clearly
thought far more often than she spoke; the soft laugh he could
sometimes coax from her made him want to laugh with her, while
Martha’s high-pitched whinnies made him cringe. The more foolish
Martha let herself appear, the more sensible Bill realised Lily
was.

The other group who intervened on Lily’s
behalf would not have been particularly interested had anyone ever
bothered to tell them the effect they had had. When the last term
of the year began, Lily gained the new pupils she had so dreaded: a
cohort of Feenan children, impelled by the threat of the law into
reluctant school attendance.

‘They’re as bad as you said, Lizzie,’ Lily
lamented when she half-staggered through Lizzie’s kitchen door at
the end of the first week of the new term. ‘They start fights every
lunch-time, they throw things in the class room, and they don’t
take any notice of me except when I drag one of them off his bench
and get stuck into him with the strap. That’s the only good thing
about them—at least they’re all small enough for me to manhandle—so
far, anyway. The biggest one will be beyond me by next year, I’m
sure.’

‘Honestly, I don’t know what they think
they’re doing, making those horrible brats come to school,’ Lizzie
said as she helped Lily off with her cloak. ‘They should just let
them stay ignorant if they can’t behave like civilised folk.’

‘I won’t stay civilised myself for much
longer with that lot to cope with. You know what they did today?
When we’d finished school and I sent all the children home, those
Feenans opened the paddock and let my horse out.’

‘The little brats!’ Lizzie exclaimed.

‘They made sure they frightened him, too,
yelling at him and slapping him with a stick. It took me ages to
catch him, that’s why I’m so late. I’d probably still be chasing
him if your little brother Ernie hadn’t helped me—Thomas and George
did, too.’

‘Well, I’m glad Ernie was some use.’

‘Mmm. Ernie’s not a bit interested in
learning anything, I’ll never get him past Standard Three, but he
doesn’t give me much trouble. Thank goodness I’m staying here this
weekend, I couldn’t have faced that long drive tonight. Ohh, I’m
exhausted,’ she sighed as she sank into a chair. ‘And it’s
months
till the holidays.’

Things did not improve at the school under
the Feenans’ reign of terror. Lily grew paler than ever in the
ensuing weeks. Dark circles appeared under her eyes, and her
cheekbones became more prominent as worry spoiled her appetite. She
tried to keep up a brave face, but Lizzie could see that Lily was
becoming despondent. Lily hid her feelings successfully enough that
Bill had no idea how much of a struggle her work had become, and it
was sheer accident when he did find out.

It was on a Thursday afternoon, and Lily was
to stay the night. Bill had dropped in on his way home from town,
hoping he might find Lily already there. Having found that she had
not yet arrived, he was standing by the door about to leave when
the door burst open and she rushed in.

One glance at her showed how distraught she
was. Her hair had come loose from its pins, and wisps were falling
around her face; her eyes brimmed with tears; and down the front of
her beige skirt was a large blotch of black ink.

‘Lily, what the heck happened?’ Bill
asked.

‘I can’t bear it any more, I can’t,’ Lily
sobbed. ‘Not those horrible children. They’re monsters!’ Tears
streamed down her face. She staggered a little as she took a half
step forward. Bill reached out and Lily flung herself against him,
letting his arms close around her. ‘Th-that Des Feenan. I w-was
just t-trying to get him to—’ the next word was lost in a sob. ‘And
then h-he threw the ink—and the other one s-said—’

‘Shh, Lily, shh,’ Bill soothed. ‘One of
those brats did this?’

Lily nodded and gulped back a sob. ‘They’re
getting worse and worse—they don’t take any notice of me—I
can’t—’

‘Right, that’s settled,’ Bill announced.
‘You’re not going back to that school, not for those kids to drive
you up the wall.’

‘I’ve got to, Bill—it’s my job—I’ve got
to.’

‘No, you don’t. Or… well, I suppose you’ll
have to for a couple more weeks, you’ll have to give notice or
something.’

‘I can’t stop working. I’ve got no
money.’

‘That doesn’t matter. I’ll be providing for
you soon enough, once we’re married.’

‘Hallelujah,’ Lizzie remarked to the room at
large before she shepherded three fascinated children out of the
room without disturbing the pair who had eyes and ears only for
each other.

*

And so it was decided, just like that. Lily
was not foolish enough even to consider saying no, though she did
insist that she would not give up her teaching till the end of the
year.

‘I’m meant to give a term’s notice, Bill,’
she said. ‘It wouldn’t be right for me just to walk out. Anyway,
I’ll be able to put up with the worst those Feenans can do to me,
now I know it’ll only be for a few more months.’

Bill reluctantly gave in, but he had no
intention of seeing Lily again tried as sorely as she had been. The
morning after he had made the proposal that had taken him by
surprise more than it had anyone else, he paid an unannounced visit
to the school, made a startled Lily point out the perpetrator of
the ink incident, and administered summary justice on the villain
with his riding crop, afterwards giving dire warnings to his
wide-eyed audience of what might be in store for anyone else
foolish enough to give Miss Radford any trouble.

Thus cowed, most of the class behaved in an
exemplary fashion for many weeks, while the Feenan children’s
attendance became more and more haphazard until, a week after
Bill’s visit, they stopped coming altogether.

‘The education people will catch up with
them next year and make them send their children again,’ Lily told
Frank and Lizzie. ‘But I won’t be there then!’ She gave a laugh of
pure happiness.

*

While he was pleased for Bill and Lily,
Frank followed the progress of their romance with no more than
vague interest. He had other things to think about in the last
months of the year. Calving time was like no calving he had ever
overseen before; this year he had his three Jersey cows to fuss
over.

The three calves arrived over four days in
early August, interspersed among the almost-unnoticed Shorthorns.
After the first Frank was delighted, after the second triumphant,
and when the third shiny golden creature slid wetly into the world
Frank could hardly contain his jubilation.

‘Another heifer,’ he shouted to Lizzie as he
burst into the house, and for once Lizzie did not scold him for
wearing his boots inside. ‘Three heifers! Twice as many Jerseys to
milk!’ He flung his arms around Lizzie and lifted her off the
floor, twirling her around despite her laughing protests.

‘It’s like a sign,’ he said when he had
calmed down a little. ‘A sign I’m doing the right thing.’

‘Well, you already knew
that
,’ Lizzie
said with the assurance that he loved so much in her. He hugged her
again until she protested that she could not breathe.

The new calves thrived, fussed over by Frank
and by his older two children, who vied with each other for the
honour of feeding the Jerseys when the calves had been taken away
from their mothers. Maudie insisted it was only right that she
should have two of the calves to feed, as she was the oldest; Joey
tried to argue the point, but Maudie’s skill in disputation was too
much for him.

When November arrived, the event came that
Frank had been awaiting almost as eagerly as the birth of the
calves: it was time to put his bull in with the cows. It did not
take long to see that, Lizzie’s doubtful comments notwithstanding,
Duke William was approaching his job with energy and
enthusiasm.

‘I hope he doesn’t wear himself out,’ Lizzie
remarked as she and Frank leaned over the fence and watched Duke
William at work one day.

‘Him? He’s only getting started,’ said
Frank. ‘There’s plenty of go in that fellow. Hey, Maudie was asking
me the other day what Duke was doing with the cows, climbing on
them like that.’

‘Trust her not to miss a trick. What’d you
tell her?’

‘I just said he was playing games with them.
I suppose she’ll work it out for herself one day.’ He thought for a
moment. ‘I don’t think anyone ever told me what the bull’s really
up to—I can’t remember when I figured it out.’

‘I think it was the night we got married,’
Lizzie said, ducking nimbly out of his reach before Frank could
give her the playful slap on the bottom she was asking for.

Frank tried to tell himself that he needed
to keep an eye on the bull while he was in with his harem, making
sure Duke William did not overtire himself. He went around sporting
a foolish grin all during Duke William’s weeks of pleasure, but he
did not realise just how obvious his empathy with the bull had
become until Lizzie pointed it out to him one night.

The moment he had put out the lamp, he
reached for the soft body lying close to him and began lifting her
nightdress. He had only got it up to her thighs when Lizzie
murmured, ‘You’ve been watching that bull again, haven’t you?’

‘A bit,’ Frank admitted.

‘I thought as much. Honestly, Frank, you’re
as bad as when we were first married, now you’ve got a bull.’

‘Stop complaining,’ Frank whispered. He
heard a smothered giggle, and enjoyed the pleasant reflection that
there was one room in the house where Lizzie was happy to let him
boss her.

By December, Frank was confident that all
the cows were in calf except the two who would be their house cows
over the coming winter. It was also December when Lizzie told him
she thought there would be another baby the following August.

‘And that’s the fault of your bull, too,’
she added, though ‘fault’ was hardly the right word for news that
made them both so happy.

‘No, I’ll take the full blame for that piece
of work myself,’ said Frank.

*

Lily moved in with Lizzie and Frank soon
after her engagement was announced, abandoning her weary treks to
and from town with relief.

‘It’s more convenient for Bill to come and
see you, too,’ Lizzie had said when pressing her hospitality.

‘Bill will see all he wants of me soon
enough,’ Lily said wryly. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t give him the
opportunity to think better of it while he’s still got the
chance.’

‘Lily, you say some silly things at times!’
Lizzie scolded. ‘Of course he’s not going to change his mind.
Bill’s not stupid. Anyway, he’d never dare let you down, he’d never
hear the end of it.’

‘Thank you, Lizzie, that’s very
encouraging,’ Lily replied, laughing. ‘We were going to leave the
wedding until February—do you think we should have it as soon as
possible, before Bill gets tempted to run away from home?’

‘You should have it in December, as soon as
school’s finished,’ Lizzie pronounced. ‘No sense keeping everyone
waiting—you two have been slow enough already.’

When Lizzie became aware of her pregnancy,
she was more pleased than ever that she had urged Lily into an
early wedding. ‘I might be too big by February, I could have missed
out on going to it,’ she said to Frank, indignant at the very
thought.

‘That’d be a bit rough, eh?’ Frank agreed.
‘Specially when it was all your idea.’

Lily insisted on a small wedding, her own
determination not to make a show of herself strengthened by the
discovery that Bill was putting up with a good deal of half-serious
complaints from his father over the fact that it was Arthur who
would have to pay for the occasion.

‘Your father’s always charming to me, but
he’s said some dreadful things to Bill,’ Lily said to Lizzie. ‘He
told him no wonder Bill was marrying an orphan, he’d never get any
girl’s father to let him have her.’

‘I’ve never heard anyone call Pa charming,’
Lizzie sniffed. ‘He thinks a lot of you, Ma told me. Right after
that first time you went around there for lunch, he said you’ve got
plenty of sense.’ Lizzie did not bother to quote her father’s
comment in full: that Lily was not very young, but she seemed to
have a good head on her shoulders.

‘Did he? That was nice of him. Bill said
your father told Alf and Ernie they’d better make sure they didn’t
marry orphans or he’d be bankrupt. Bill says he’s joking, but I
don’t want to cause any trouble, not when I’ll be living with them
soon enough. Just your family and your Uncle Jack’s, that’s all
we’ll have at the wedding.’

‘Pity that means you’ve got to have Charlie
as well. Haven’t you got anyone of your own to invite?’

‘I don’t really have any relations. I’d
better send an invitation to Uncle Fred and Aunt Helen—he’s the one
who paid for me to go to school. I’m sure they won’t come, though,
I haven’t seen them in four years, and even then it was only for
afternoon tea the day before I left Auckland for good.’