A Second Chance (21 page)

‘Mrs Stewart,’ she said coolly, and turned
away from Amy. ‘Oh, come now, Jimmy, don’t be foolish. I can see
that this… lady is hardly likely to be your niece.’ The brief pause
she inserted before “lady” turned the word into a barely veiled
insult.

‘Nevertheless, it happens to be true,’ Jimmy
said. ‘After a fashion, anyway. Charlotte, dear, this is Susannah’s
stepdaughter.’

‘Oh, really?’ Charlotte looked Amy up and
down. ‘From a farm. I see. And how do you come to be in Auckland,
Mrs Stewart?’

‘I’m just visiting a—’ Amy began, when she
felt a hand on her arm.

‘Amy, there you are!’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘I
was beginning to think you’d gone home without me!’ She turned to
look at Amy’s companions and her smile faltered, to be quickly
replaced with a polite semblance of one. ‘It’s Mrs Taylor, isn’t
it? I believe we’ve met.’ She extended her hand, and Charlotte
Taylor took it with rather less reluctance than she had shown
Amy’s. ‘And Mr Taylor.’ She gave Jimmy a brief nod, but made no
move to offer her hand.

‘Ah, Miss Millish, how delightful to see
you,’ Jimmy said, his smile growing broad. The sight of him looking
admiringly at Sarah made Amy’s stomach turn. Sarah’s resemblance to
Jimmy, in her height and carriage as well as something in her
features, suddenly seemed so striking to Amy that she feared the
whole roomful of people must see it. ‘And I see you’re acquainted
with Miss Leith… Mrs Stewart, I should say.’ He shot a quizzical
glance at Amy; she could see that the name “Stewart” meant nothing
to him.

‘Yes, Mrs Stewart has been kind enough to
come and stay with me.’

‘Oh, a lady companion,’ said Charlotte. ‘I
see. How very suitable.’ She bestowed a patronising smile on
Amy.

Sarah slipped her arm through Amy’s. ‘You
misunderstand me, Mrs Taylor. Mrs Stewart is not a paid
companion—she is my very dear friend, who’s doing me the favour of
staying in my house.’ Amy felt Sarah’s hand give her arm a squeeze.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse us, there are some other guests I’d like to
introduce to Mrs Stewart before we leave. Good evening to you, Mrs
Taylor. Mr Taylor.’ Another quick nod, and Sarah was deftly
shepherding Amy to a distant part of the room.

Amy did her best to appear unaffected by the
encounter, but it was clear that Sarah had noted her discomfort.
Sarah spent the next few minutes making polite farewells, then they
retrieved their wraps and went out to the waiting carriage.

‘I’m so sorry you were exposed to that
ill-mannered display,’ Sarah said as they rode home. ‘
 
“Lady companion” indeed! I’ve no time for Mr
Taylor, but I think he and his wife deserve each other. And the two
of them bailing up my little Amy like that!’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Amy said distractedly.
Her mind was full of what she had committed herself to: seeing
Jimmy again, and talking to him. Realising that Sarah was genuinely
anxious for her, she dragged her attention back to the present.
‘She didn’t upset me, Sarah. I’m all right. I had a lovely time
tonight.’

‘Until you were attacked by the terrible
Taylors, that is,’ Sarah said with a little laugh. She gave Amy a
quick hug. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t leave you on your own with either
of them again.’

Amy pleaded tiredness when Sarah suggested a
late-night chat over warm milk, and she was soon in bed with the
lights out. But sleep eluded her for a long time. She lay awake,
her mind churning with a confused mixture of old memories and
trepidation of the meeting to come. An effort of will stopped her
from tossing and turning, but she could not order her thoughts into
the stillness she forced on her body.

*

Amy was careful to appear composed when she
met Sarah at the breakfast table next morning. She managed to
maintain a calm demeanour into the afternoon, aided by Sarah’s
preoccupation with preparing for the meeting she was to attend. Amy
sat quietly in the study for much of the day, reading while Sarah
worked.

Sarah left the house an hour after they had
had lunch. ‘I’ll be gone till after five, I expect,’ she said as
she pulled on her gloves in the hall. ‘I’m sorry to leave you on
your own for so long.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Amy said. ‘I might
write some letters, then I think I’ll go for a walk later.’

‘That’s a good idea. You’re looking rather
tired today, an airing will do you good.’ She kissed Amy goodbye
and went out.

Amy told herself that there was no need to
take any particular care with getting dressed to go out. She did
have to change; she could hardly appear on the street in one of her
tea gowns. But that would only take a few minutes.

So she was mildly surprised to find herself
in her room an hour before it was time to leave, with both her
walking costumes spread out on the bed along with several hats. She
would probably wear the plainest of them, she decided. But it would
do no harm to try on the others.

Rather than the grey costume, she chose the
rust-coloured one. Sarah had told her she liked the way this dress
suited her colouring. That was a good enough reason to choose it,
and it seemed only logical to match it with the hat that she knew
set it off best. Before donning the hat she let her hair down,
brushed it, and pinned it up again carefully. She was not on the
farm, she told herself; it was important to look tidy.

The park was only a short walk from Sarah’s
house. Amy was ready well before she needed to be, but she waited
until it was almost four o’clock before she set out. It would do
Jimmy no harm to wait a few minutes for her; she had no intention
of wasting any more of her life waiting for him.

She saw him before he saw her. He was
walking back and forth near the fountain, with the long-legged,
restless stride she remembered from so long ago. When he saw her
his face lit up. From this distance he could almost have been the
twenty-year-old she had known.

He was at her side in a few rapid paces.
‘Amy, you came! Let’s go over behind those trees, it’ll be more
private.’ He made to take her arm, but Amy took a step out of his
reach. She walked beside him to the seat he had indicated, and sat
down as far from him as the bench allowed.

It was the first chance she had had to look
at Jimmy properly since he had erupted back into her life. He was
still easily recognisable, but the years had left more traces on
him than the previous evening’s hurried encounter had shown her.
While he was still trim, he had lost the lean, rangy look of his
youth. His complexion had acquired a florid tinge that spoke of a
fondness for good living. His hair was thinning a little on top,
and there were traces of grey around the temples.

He saw her studying him, and smiled. ‘I knew
you at once. You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ Amy answered sharply.
‘I’m nearly forty. The last time you saw me I was fifteen.’ Fifteen
when she had found herself frightened and alone and carrying his
child. Fifteen, and wondering what she had done to make him abandon
her.

‘Well, you haven’t changed in my eyes.
You’re still my pretty little Amy.’ His smile broadened. ‘I
remember I could always tell exactly what you were thinking, just
by looking at you. Perhaps I can still do it. Shall I tell you
what’s going through your mind right now? You’re thinking about how
long we’ve been apart, and how right it feels to be together
again.’

Amy remembered how irresistible she had once
found that smile of his; now it struck her as nauseatingly full of
self-satisfaction. This was the man she had given herself to. The
man she had trusted. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head as she spoke.
‘I wasn’t thinking that. I was wondering how I could have been so
stupid.’

His smile faltered. ‘Stupid? What do you
mean, Amy? It wasn’t your fault we couldn’t stay together! It’s
just that we were so young—I had no proper job, no home of my own.
It wouldn’t have been fair on you to drag you up here away from
your family and make you live with Mother and Father—especially not
with a baby on the way, and all the fuss there would have been. No,
don’t blame yourself. If anyone’s at fault, I suppose it’s me.’

‘You suppose it’s you,’ said Amy. ‘Do you
know, I think you might be right.’ It was hard to imagine having
any useful discussion with this man, but there were questions
demanding to be aired. ‘I want to ask you something. Did you mean
those things you said to me? When you asked me to marry you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Jimmy said readily. ‘You turned
my head the moment I saw you. I thought I’d be stuck in a boring
little place all summer, with no better company than Susannah, and
there you were, just like a princess in a fairy tale—one of those
stories where the princess is looking after pigs, or something like
that. Of course I thought I’d rescue you and take you away from all
the mud and squalor. I didn’t think it through, not when I was so
busy being happy.’

‘And that last day—the day before you left.
You helped me pick peaches, do you remember?’

He grinned at her. ‘I certainly do. I knew
you were a passionate girl, but you outdid yourself that day. You
gave me quite a sendoff. I’ve always found the scent of ripe
peaches rather delightful since then.’

Amy pushed down the awkwardness she felt in
speaking of such things. ‘I want to know when you decided you
wouldn’t be coming back to me. Was it after you got back home? Or
had you already made up your mind that day? When you took something
to remember me by?’

His obvious discomfort was answer enough.
‘Amy, you have to try and understand the position I was in.’ He
spoke without meeting her eyes. ‘When you told me there was a child
on the way, it stopped being a fairy story. It became all too real.
I had to think of the future—yours as well as mine. If we could
have waited a year or two, till I was properly settled, it would
have been quite different. It wouldn’t have mattered so much that
you… well, that you weren’t… your father wasn’t…’ he trailed off
awkwardly.

‘That Pa wasn’t rich?’ Amy finished for him.
‘That I wasn’t good enough for you?’

‘It wasn’t a matter of being good enough!’
Jimmy protested unconvincingly. ‘It’s not that simple. I just
wasn’t in a position to get married right then. Surely you see
that?’

‘So you just went off and left me thinking
you were coming back? You didn’t bother telling me?’

He looked somewhat shamefaced. ‘It seemed
easier like that. I thought you might get upset.’

Amy found herself lost for words. ‘And how
did you think I was going to manage?’ she said at last. ‘What did
you think I’d do, with a baby on the way and no husband?’

‘Well, I thought people mightn’t worry so
much about that sort of thing in the country,’ Jimmy said feebly.
‘And I knew you’d be all right, with your father to look after you.
Don’t you remember me asking you whether he’d beat you? You told me
he wouldn’t.’

‘No, he didn’t beat me,’ Amy said quietly.
‘Pa was always kind. I just about broke his heart, but he still
wanted to do his best for me.’ For a moment she lost herself in
memories of her father.

Jimmy broke into her thoughts. ‘I did try to
find out what had happened to you. Later, when I’d had time to
think about how it all might have turned out differently. When I
came back from Melbourne I tried asking Mother about Susannah’s
family. She didn’t seem very interested, though, and I couldn’t go
on about it or she would have got suspicious. I tried with
Constance, too—I had a feeling she knew something about it, just
from the odd remark she made about country girls. I didn’t get very
far with her, either.

‘When Father was ill and Susannah came to
Auckland, I thought I might have a chance to find out at last.’ He
shook his head. ‘But I couldn’t seem to get her on her own. She was
in an odd mood the whole time—she kept looking at me as if she
wanted something from me, and half the time I was worried she might
be going to make a scene, like she did when I was on the farm. She
and Charlotte took an instant dislike to one another, then they
spent the rest of the time pretending to be fond of each other and
making cutting remarks, in that way women have. Well, Charlotte
did, anyway,’ he amended. ‘Susannah didn’t say much at all. And
Charlotte was hanging about the whole time, so there was no chance
to try and draw Susannah out.’

He turned to Amy and smiled. ‘I’d almost
given up on ever hearing anything about you again, and then last
night you suddenly appeared, just like magic. I used to say you
were a bit magic, remember? I’d actually been thinking about you
earlier in the evening—about that funny little dance we went to at
the schoolhouse, and how pretty you were in your blue dress. And I
looked across the room and saw you—I could hardly believe my eyes.
You were even wearing a dress that looked much the same.’

‘It’s the same dress,’ Amy murmured.

‘Really? But it’s been more than twenty
years!’

Amy shrugged. ‘I had to make it last. I
couldn’t go getting new silk dresses every year.’

‘Oh.’ He absorbed this revelation in silence
for a moment. ‘You said you’d wear it to our wedding, remember?
Back when we were telling ourselves we’d be able to get
married.’

‘Yes. And I did get married in it. Just not
to you.’

‘Who did you marry, Amy? I don’t remember
meeting anyone called Stewart in Ruatane.’

‘Oh, you met him. I doubt if you had much of
a conversation, though. He wasn’t much for talking. I didn’t go far
from home when I got married, only next door. I married
Charlie.’

She saw his puzzled expression gradually
replaced by one of disbelief. ‘Charlie?’ he echoed. ‘You can’t mean
that bad-tempered old fellow who was always staring at you?’

‘I don’t suppose he was all that much older
than you are now. He seemed old to me then, though. When I was
fifteen and I said I’d marry him.’