Mud and Gold (81 page)

‘So those funny-looking cows of yours are
doing all right, are they?’ The voice made Frank start. He gave the
merest nod of acknowledgement to Charlie. ‘Feeling pretty pleased
with yourself, eh, Kelly?’

He
was
feeling pleased with himself;
there was no denying it. Too pleased to let Charlie Stewart annoy
him.

‘Yes, things are going all right,’ Frank
said. ‘I’m getting more cream than ever from the Jerseys. A fair
few of the rest are half-breeds now, so they’re giving richer milk
than the old Shorthorns. You don’t want to put your name down for
one of my heifers, do you?’ he said cheekily.

Charlie spat on the ground. ‘I’ve better
things to spend my money on than dopey-looking cows.’

‘Please yourself,’ said Frank. ‘There’s
plenty of people that do want them.’ He gave a laugh. ‘It’s a good
thing I can get a bit of cash out of selling the odd animal, too!
The way the family’s growing, I’m going to have to think about
building on to the house in a couple of years.’

Charlie gave a grunt that Frank took as
encouragement. He went on, warming to his subject. ‘There’s things
to do with the farm, too—there’s always something that needs
planning. Now I’ve got the cow shed decent, I thought I might get a
bit more of the bush broken in this winter. I’m trying to build up
the Jersey herd as quick as I can, so I’ll need the extra pasture
in a few years. I mean, I’ve got three sons now. I’ve got to think
about providing for them, eh?’

‘You think you’re bloody clever, don’t you?’
Charlie growled.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Frank said, taken
aback by the ungracious response. ‘I’ve sort of tried to figure out
how to do things, then just done my best, that’s all. Things are
working out pretty well, anyway.’ He glanced around the garden and
saw Maudie re-tying Beth’s hair ribbons, which had worked loose as
the younger girl ran around with the other children. Such pretty
daughters he had, Frank reflected proudly. Especially Maudie, who
was the image of her mother at the same age.

That thought led Frank’s attention naturally
back to Lizzie. A warm feeling flowed through him as he watched
her. ‘I couldn’t do it without Lizzie,’ he said, more to himself
than to Charlie. ‘It wouldn’t be worth it.’

‘You must need the money, all right,’
Charlie said sourly. ‘That woman of yours looks as though she eats
plenty.’

The smile disappeared from Frank’s face.
‘You can keep your opinions on my wife to yourself, thank you.’

But his show of irritation seemed to
encourage Charlie. ‘You make sure she’s with child all the time,
eh? Going on to me about how many sons you’ve got! You don’t get
much pleasure out of her when she’s got a swollen belly, do
you?’

‘You shut your mouth,’ Frank said, speaking
rather louder than he had intended. He was aware of Lizzie’s
attention suddenly on him as the unfamiliar sound of Frank’s voice
raised in anger reached her. Amy, too, looked up from where she sat
with Harry when she heard the angry voices; no doubt she had
learned to be alert to such danger signs.

‘Don’t think I didn’t see you talking to my
wife before, either. I’m warning you, Kelly, you keep your hands
off her or I’ll kill you. She’s still my woman, I’ll not let any
other man have her.’

‘I don’t want her! Don’t be such a bloody
idiot, thinking every man who talks to your wife wants to take her
off you!’

‘You wouldn’t have the gumption, would you?
You didn’t have the guts to get a woman of your own—you had to wait
until that one started chasing after you.’

‘Who asked your opinion?’ Frank demanded,
genuinely angry now.

‘No wonder you want to keep her with child
all the time. She doesn’t order you about so much when she’s got a
big belly, eh?’ Charlie spoke in rapid bursts, pausing only to take
gulps of air. ‘You watch out, Kelly—you think you’ve got her where
you want her right now—it won’t last, you smug bastard. She’ll turn
on you, you mark my words. They’re all bitches, these Leith
women.’

All other conversation had died, but Frank
hardly noticed. ‘You say one more word like that about Lizzie and
I’ll knock your teeth down your throat,’ he growled.

‘You?’ Charlie spat in disgust. ‘A little
runt like you? I’d break your arm before you knew what had hit
you.’

Charlie was a head taller than Frank, but
twenty years older. Frank was not sure what the outcome of a fight
might be, but he felt willing to give it a try. He smelt the sour
odour of the older man’s sweat, and saw his massive fists. Frank
caught a glimpse of Amy’s worried face out of the corner of his
eye, and remembered Lizzie’s description of that little face
bruised and bloodied by those same huge fists.

‘Well, at least I don’t go knocking around
women half my size,’ he flung at Charlie.

The silence around them grew more tense, and
Charlie’s face turned grimmer than ever. ‘What business is that of
yours?’ he snarled. ‘Keep your nose out of my affairs or I’ll teach
you to—’

‘That’s enough, you fellows,’ Arthur said,
striding up and interposing his body between the antagonists. ‘This
is a birthday party, not a bar for you to brawl in.’ He met
Charlie’s black stare with one far sterner, holding his gaze until
Charlie turned away and affected indifference. ‘You’re only here
because of Amy,’ he told Charlie. ‘If you don’t want to behave, you
can take yourself home. No one’ll miss you.’

He turned his back on Charlie. ‘Frank, you
can behave yourself, too. Carrying on like an idiot! Go and sit
down,’ he said, giving Frank a cuff on the shoulder to emphasise
his words. ‘And you can apologise to your Uncle Jack—giving him all
this bother on his birthday,’ he called after him as Frank made his
way back to the rest of the family.

‘Sorry,’ Frank mumbled in Jack’s direction,
but Jack waved his apology aside. Frank saw Susannah staring at him
with a disdainful expression, and her mouth shaped a word that
might have been ‘animals’. She then made a show of looking in the
other direction, thin-lipped with disapproval.

Already regretting his outburst, Frank
dropped to the ground beside Lizzie. When he met her eyes he
regretted it far more. Lizzie glared at him, barely able to speak
for the anger that was making her eyes flash. She would not make a
fuss in front of everyone, but there was going to be trouble later,
Frank realised with a sinking feeling.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing,
rowing with Charlie like that?’ she hissed under her breath.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Frank. ‘He was
saying things about you, and I got wild. I was just trying to shut
him up.’

‘Yes, and making more trouble for Amy.
That’s just what she needs, isn’t it? You putting the old so-and-so
in a worse temper than usual.’

‘I didn’t mean to—he shouldn’t have gone on
like he did.’ Frank caught Amy’s eye to send a silent apology, and
was relieved to see that she appeared surprisingly calm. She even
managed to direct a small, rueful smile in his direction. ‘She
looks all right, anyway.’

‘No thanks to you,’ Lizzie shot back.

*

Amy watched Charlie settle himself against a
tree trunk beside the beer, then turned her attention back to
Harry. ‘Funny how we can’t have a family get-together without a
row,’ she said, smiling to make a joke of it. ‘Never mind, I think
some of you think the fights are the best part. No wonder Susannah
looks so disgusted with us all.’

‘What’d he mean?’ Harry demanded. ‘What’d
Frank mean about knocking around women?’

‘Don’t go making a fuss, there’s no need.
You’ll upset Pa if you go on about it.’

Harry was not to be put off. ‘What’d he
mean? Has that old bugger been thumping you?’

‘Leave it, Harry,’ Amy said. ‘It’s all
right.’

‘If he’s laid a finger on you—’

‘Harry,’ Amy interrupted, ‘I want you to
leave it. Please?’

She let her hand rest on his arm, gripping
it more tightly to be sure of his full attention. Harry’s eyes
darted from her to Charlie and back again, and she felt the muscles
of his arm tense as he clenched his fist.

But Harry was no longer the fiery
twenty-year-old with no one but himself to think about that he had
been ten years before. The responsibilities of a wife and four
children had had a steadying effect on him, and he had learned a
degree of self-control that his family would hardly have believed
possible once.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t do anything
about him just now. Not in front of everyone.’ He sent a baleful
glare in Charlie’s direction. ‘I’ll leave it till a better
time.’

He raised his voice to be sure Charlie would
hear. ‘Maybe I’ll come over and see you some time soon, Amy.
John’ll come with me, I expect. If there’s anything troubling you,
we should be able to sort it out. We might come tomorrow.’

‘There’s nothing troubling me,’ said Amy.
‘But you and John are welcome to come over any time you want.’
Impulsively, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him
soundly. ‘You’re a dear—even if you do like to make a fuss about
nothing.’

Amy released Harry and smiled. It was good
to know that if the power of her threat to leave Charlie ever
wavered, the thought of the vengeance her father and brothers would
exact would not be far from his mind.

She looked over at Charlie, and could not
help feeling a little sorry for him in his so obvious isolation.
But feeling sorry for him was vastly preferable to being frightened
of him.

I haven’t got anything to be frightened
of now
. After so many years of wariness and fear, it was
difficult to comprehend their absence.

December 1894 – May 1895

After the fracas at their father’s birthday
party, Amy saw more of her older brothers than she had since her
marriage. Their first visit to Charlie’s house took place the
morning after the party. Harry was determined to elicit the details
of what Charlie had done to deserve Frank’s invective, and Amy was
equally determined to avoid trouble. She eventually admitted that
Charlie had, indeed, hit her in the past; at the same time assuring
them that that had been long ago, and there was no risk of any more
such violence.

Charlie had wisely made himself scarce as
soon as he caught sight of Amy’s brothers approaching. John and
Harry looked grim at her revelation; Harry scolded her, and said
she should have told them when Charlie had first hit her. He
insisted that she do so if anything of the sort ever happened
again.

‘Maybe we should sort him out anyway, just
to let him know what he’ll get if he tries anything like that
again,’ Harry said, and John looked ready to go along with the
idea. But they allowed themselves to be persuaded by Amy to let
well enough alone.

That visit was the first of many. Harry and
John took to popping over together or, more often, alone, for
unannounced visits. Since Jack also now made a habit of dropping in
on Amy, hardly a week went by without her enjoying the company of
one or other of her family.

She had worried that after his skirmish with
Frank Charlie might forbid her to have anything to do with Lizzie,
but that fear was soon laid to rest. Charlie, it seemed, saw the
incident as a humiliating defeat, and chose to pretend it had never
happened.

To her huge relief, Malcolm managed to pass
his Standard One examination, as did David, so Malcolm was safe
from that particular focus of his father’s wrath for at least
another year. Charlie had not yet become aware of Malcolm’s
occasional truancy; Amy resigned herself to the knowledge that it
could only be a matter of time before he did discover it. But there
was no sense worrying about that before she had to.

Her life had assumed a sort of tranquillity
that Amy could not in strict honesty call happiness, but was
content to make do with. There was no more fear, and no more vain
yearning for what might have been; or at least if there was still
yearning, she had buried it too deeply for it to give pain. The
moments of affection she managed to snatch with David, already few
and far between, were becoming even rarer as the boy grew up and
spent more of his time with his father and brother, but she
accepted that as inevitable. She knew David loved her as much as he
ever had, even if he was learning not to show it so openly.

Contentment was not the stuff of dreams, but
it was sufficient; it had to be. It was in May that Amy discovered
just how fragile her tranquillity was.

*

Charlie had gone into town by himself that
morning to get the supplies; the briefness of his absence told Amy
that he had not paid a visit to the hotel. After lunch he lingered
for a short time over the newspaper he had brought home, then
dropped it on the floor as he rose to leave.

Left alone, Amy picked up the crumpled
newspaper. A minute or two scanning the main stories; that was all
she intended to allow herself. But it took only seconds before her
eyes were caught by a story that made her give a sharp intake of
breath, then stop breathing altogether until her body forced her to
expel the stale air and take a great gulp to replace it.

‘No,’ she whispered, her eyes wide with
horror. ‘What have I done? What have I done to my baby?’

*

Frank had collected a copy of the same
newspaper when he and Lizzie had done their shopping that morning,
and over lunch he glanced at it. The pages of farming items were
what he usually found most interesting, but he let his eyes run
over the news stories first, and stopped at the most dramatic
one.

‘Hey, listen to this, Lizzie.’ He spread the
newspaper flat on the table and began reading snatches aloud.

‘ “
Shocking case… woman
charged with murder… two bodies in garden—”
 
’