Mud and Gold (72 page)

‘Mmm.’ Frank looked at her very seriously.
‘You know when we did all those sums about borrowing money to buy
the Jerseys?’

Lizzie groaned. ‘I’ll never forget! I
thought my head would never stop spinning from that lot. Why? Oh,
Frank, you don’t want to do any more, do you?’

‘No, not just now. I just thought I’d better
tell you that we did them all wrong.’

‘What?’ Lizzie said in dismay. ‘We can’t
have!’

‘Yes we did, we left something out. We never
put in anything to do with selling bulls. It doesn’t matter, don’t
worry about it. That was a nice pudding you made tonight.’

Lizzie studied him narrowly. ‘Are you
teasing me?’

‘Maybe,’ Frank confessed. He laughed aloud,
crossed to Lizzie in two strides, and put his arms around her waist
to pick her up and swing her around, making Lizzie shriek. ‘Thirty
pounds, Lizzie! Thirty pounds he’s paying me for that bull!’

‘Put me down!’ Lizzie squealed, waving her
soapy hands ineffectually. ‘You’ll do yourself a mischief,
Frank!’

‘Not carrying a little thing like you, I
won’t,’ Frank teased. He swung Lizzie around a few more times, then
let her gently down to the floor.

She clung to him for support against her
dizziness, and Frank took advantage of her helplessness to kiss her
soundly. ‘Thirty pounds,’ she breathed when her mouth was free.
‘What are you going to do with all that money? Buy more cows?’

Frank shook his head. He sat down at the
table and drew Lizzie to the chair beside him. She wiped her wet
hands on her apron and looked expectantly at him. ‘For a minute I
thought I might,’ he said. ‘But then I thought about it a bit more,
and I’ve decided it’s better for me to breed my own from now on.
I’ve got really good cows, why should I pay a fortune to buy
someone else’s?’ Lizzie nodded her agreement.

‘It’ll be no problem making the payment to
the bank this year, that’s one thing,’ he said. ‘But I was already
pretty happy about that, the milk cheques have been good this last
year.

‘No, I think I’ll put most of it into doing
the place up a bit. That cow shed of mine’s not fit for the
Jerseys, it’s time I built one with a decent concrete floor like
that dairy advisor fellow told me about.’

‘Do you know how to do concrete?’

Frank shrugged. Right now he felt as though
he could do anything. ‘I’ll figure it out. I’ll ask a few people,
there must be someone around here who’s done concrete.’

‘Pa’ll say you’re mad. He’ll say there’s
nothing wrong with a dirt floor in a cow shed.’

‘Your pa said I was mad to buy the
Jerseys.’

‘I know. Pa’s a real know-all, I’m glad you
don’t take any notice of him.’

Frank savoured the thought of telling Arthur
what the bull had sold for. ‘You know, I’d only ever thought about
how much money I’d get from milking the Jerseys. I’d never really
thought about being able to sell them. Maybe in a year or so when
I’ve built the herd up a bit I’ll be able to sell the odd heifer.
Not for anything like thirty pounds, of course, but those girls’ll
be worth a bit. Especially if… no, that’s a mad idea.’

‘What?’ Lizzie prompted.

‘Oh, that Jackson fellow said I should take
a couple of the Jerseys up to Auckland. They have a really big show
up there, he says, much bigger than the Ruatane one. He said my
cows are as good as any of the ones they show up there.’

‘Of course they are,’ Lizzie agreed at
once.

‘He reckons if they won a prize up there I’d
be able to sell them easy as anything. I won’t do it, of
course.’

‘Why not?’ Lizzie asked. ‘Why shouldn’t
you?’

‘I couldn’t do that! Heck, I’ve never even
been to Tauranga! Go all that way without you—we couldn’t take the
kids, and Mickey’s too young to leave.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t go. Who’d look after this
place while you’re away?’

‘Lizzie, you couldn’t!’ Frank protested.
‘Not run the farm as well as look after the house and all the
little ones.’

‘I wouldn’t try doing the farm work. What’s
the point of having all those brothers if they’re never any use to
me? Pa’s got more sons than he knows what to do with, he can lend
us one for a few days. No, two,’ she corrected herself. ‘One to do
the work here, with me keeping an eye on him to see he does it
properly. And another one to see you behave yourself in
Auckland.’

‘Your pa would never lend me your brothers.
He’d think it was a mad idea, racing off to Auckland,’ Frank said,
forgetting that he had thought it a mad idea himself a few minutes
before.

‘Not when you tell him how much money you’ve
got for that bull,’ Lizzie answered smartly. ‘That’ll knock him
back a bit.’

‘Maybe,’ Frank allowed. ‘I don’t know, I
don’t think I want to go, really. Anyway, it’s not for months yet,
forget about it for now. Hey, doing up the cow shed isn’t going to
take anything like thirty pounds. I thought I might slap a new coat
of paint on the house, too, smarten it up a bit. I might even fix
the verandah roof where it’s saggy. Would you like that?’

‘As long as I can keep those kids out of the
paint. Yes, it’d be good, the place does look a bit scruffy on the
outside.’

‘Mmm. Hey, when did you last have a new
dress?’

‘I made this one just last month.’

‘No, not a plain dress for every day like
that, a really fancy one.’

‘What do I want fancy dresses for? I’ve got
one dress that’s good enough for church, that’s all I need. For
anything special I’ve got my wedding dress. Frank, you’re not
getting silly ideas, are you?’

‘I don’t think it’s a silly idea for you to
have nice things. I haven’t seen you in a really nice dress since…
I don’t know when.’

‘So you think I’m like the house, eh? A bit
scruffy on the outside?’

‘Well… the outside doesn’t match up to the
inside, anyway. I think you need a new dress, Lizzie.’

‘Rubbish. I told you, I’ve got my wedding
dress for when I need anything flash.’

Frank digested this for a moment, then
frowned. ‘I haven’t seen your wedding dress for a while. You don’t
seem to be wearing it.’

‘I haven’t been anywhere flash.’

‘What about little Arfie’s christening? You
just wore the same dress you wear every Sunday.’

‘Oh, stop going on about it,’ Lizzie said.
She seemed to be avoiding his eyes. ‘If you want to spend some
money, Maudie could do with a new pair of boots.’

‘She can have some, then. But you’re going
to have a new dress, Lizzie Kelly.’

‘No, I’m—’

‘Yes, you
are
,’ Frank interrupted.
‘I’ve decided you are. I know why you’re not wearing your wedding
dress these days, too.’ Lizzie shot him a look that spelled danger,
but he ploughed on regardless. ‘It doesn’t fit any more, does
it?’

Lizzie scowled at him. ‘I can’t help it,
it’s all these babies. Every time I have one I seem to slip on a
bit more weight. I don’t need you throwing off at me about it.’

‘Hey, I don’t mind.’ Frank took hold of her
hand and persuaded her on to his lap, then slipped his arms around
her and squeezed. ‘There, you see? I can still get my arms around
you no trouble. I don’t want you any skinnier than that—I like
plenty to cuddle.’

‘I can’t fit my dress any more,’ Lizzie
muttered. ‘Amy still fits her wedding dress.’

‘Amy’s too skinny. Anyway, she’s got to fit
it—her miserable old so-and-so of a husband probably wouldn’t buy
her a new one.
Your
husband says you’re to have a new
dress.’

‘It’s just a waste of money. Oh, I suppose I
could make a new one—I saw some cheap cotton the other day in town,
it looked quite nice.’

‘No,’ said Frank. ‘Nothing cheap. A really
flash dress, like your wedding dress.’

‘Silk, you mean?’

‘Is that flash? All right then, silk.’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘No, I’m not wasting
money on a silk dress. Cotton’s good enough. I’ll—’

‘How about doing what you promised for a
change, Lizzie?’ Frank interrupted, speaking as sternly as he was
capable of.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I remember hearing you promise to… what was
it? “To love, cherish, and to obey”? How about doing some
obeying?’

Lizzie opened her mouth to argue, then
snapped it shut. ‘All right,’ she said, though Frank found her
sudden docility less than convincing. ‘What colour, then?’

‘I don’t know, what colour do you want?’

‘No, you have to say. I don’t want a new
dress at all, remember?’

‘Well…’ He looked at her eyes staring boldly
back at him and admired their colour. ‘Blue,’ he announced.

‘Right. What sort of material?’

‘Silk. I already said that.’

‘But what kind of silk?’

‘Are there different kinds?’ Frank asked
with a slight sinking feeling.

‘Oh, yes, lots of them. Silk satin, silk
crepe, silk—’

‘Heck, I don’t know about that stuff. You
pick a nice kind.’

‘Frank, if you’re going to get all bossy on
me,’ Lizzie said in a voice of irreproachable sweetness, ‘you’ve
got to do it properly. You’ll have to tell me exactly what sort of
material, and then what style you want.
I
don’t trust myself
to choose, I might do it wrong.’

Frank let his arms drop to his sides,
leaving Lizzie perched awkwardly on his lap. ‘You know, sometimes I
wish I’d taken your pa’s advice about teaching you how to behave.
Here you go pretending to do as you’re told, and you’re just
getting your own way as usual. How the heck am I meant to know what
sort of material? All right then, forget about the dress and suit
yourself. You always do.’ For a moment he considered pushing her
off his lap, but he could not quite bring himself to. Instead he
pretended to ignore her; this took some doing, with her very
tangible presence making itself felt on his knees.

Lizzie looked at him in apparent
astonishment, while Frank kept up what he hoped was a dignified
silence. The corners of her mouth turned up in a smile, and she
nestled against him.

‘Taffeta,’ she announced.

‘Eh? What are you on about now?’

‘Silk taffeta. That’s what I want. A blue
silk taffeta dress, all stiff and nice. That’ll hide the cuddly
bits.’

Frank gave in and put his arms around her
again. ‘Lizzie, you’re an annoying old chook sometimes, you know
that? You’ve got to have your own way, don’t you?’

‘Well, now I’ve had a chance to think about
it, maybe it’s not such a waste as all that, not when you’ve got
that money you didn’t expect to. I didn’t like you getting all
bossy on me, that’s all.’

‘Silly of me to try, really. You’re so good
at it, there’s no need for two bosses in the one family.’

‘I am not,’ said Lizzie. ‘One of us has got
to be sensible, I don’t see how that makes me bossy.’ She let
herself be cuddled for a few minutes, then extricated herself from
Frank’s embrace and went to finish washing the dishes. ‘Make sure
you save a bit of money after you’ve done all this stuff with cow
sheds and silk dresses,’ she remarked over her shoulder. ‘You’ll
need it.’

‘What for?’

‘For that trip to Auckland, of course!’

*

All that year, Amy followed with interest
the increasingly intense discussions in the newspapers over the
question of whether women should be allowed to vote. Her reading
was of necessity often several days out of date, as she had to wait
until Charlie had discarded his newspaper before she got a chance
for more than a glance at it, but if a particular issue discussed
the suffrage question she usually had advance warning in the
disgusted mutterings she would hear as Charlie worked his way
slowly through the paper.

‘Those interfering bitches, trying to poke
their noses in to stop a man having a drink when he pleases,’
indicated that there was some news about the temperance
movement.

‘There’s some useless men out there, don’t
know how to keep their wives in line.’ That was equally likely to
mean more temperance news or an item on women’s suffrage.

‘Those politician fellows are all half mad.
They surely can’t be that stupid.’ That was a sure-fire clue to
news about the voting question; and as the year wore on, though the
exact phrasing varied, it was an opinion Charlie expressed more and
more often.

It was early in September when Charlie
looked at his newspaper and flung it down in disgust. ‘Mad buggers
in Wellington! They’ve bloody well done it!’ Amy knew better than
to make any comment, but after that introduction it was no surprise
when she gathered up the discarded paper and found that the
Legislative Council had at last passed a Bill for women’s
suffrage.

She studied the details, lost in admiration
of the women who had worked so hard, and the men who had had the
sense to support them, then tidied the paper away and got on with
her work. But while her hands were busy all the rest of that
afternoon, she set her mind to work on a more subtle task: how she
would persuade Charlie to let her vote in the November
election.

Even if he had not been so vocally opposed
to the very idea of women’s franchise, Charlie seemed to think she
was little better than a simpleton, and therefore not worth wasting
the privilege of a vote on. It would be of no use merely to ask
him; she would have to make him want to let her vote. Amy bided her
time as the election drew nearer, observing Charlie’s mood
carefully, and in the meantime she read everything she could get
her hands on about the candidates for the Bay of Plenty electorate.
She fully intended to cast her vote intelligently.

A few days before the deadline for voter
enrolment, Charlie still seemed to be grumbling as much as
ever.

‘They’ll be giving votes to the cows and
horses next,’ he complained one day. ‘Might as well do, for all the
use votes are to a pack of meddling women.’ That was not a good
opening, and Amy let it rest.