A Second Chance (53 page)

Beth shook her head. ‘We were going to try
our best. Then Richard came out to see us, and he said he’d been
worrying ever since he’d had to tell Davie about not having any
more babies. He said…’ Beth paused, as if calling to mind the exact
words used. ‘He said he knew it was asking too much of us, and it
would only be a matter of time before the inevitable happened. So
he’d been writing to a doctor he knows in Auckland—do you know they
have doctors up there that just do delivering babies and things to
do with women’s insides?’ she said, wide-eyed at the notion. ‘He
told this doctor about me not being meant to have any more
babies—he didn’t say my name or anything, he just said I was a
patient—and they wrote back and forth about what we might be able
to do. Then the other doctor sent Richard this thing.’

She opened the box on her lap, and Amy
peered in at the rubber object. ‘Whatever is it?’ Amy asked.

Beth looked away, her face reddening. ‘It’s
to stop a baby from happening. I have to put it up inside me before
we… you know. Then I have to leave it there for a while before I
can take it out and wash it. I let it dry on the windowsill before
I put it away.’

‘What a good idea,’ Amy said, staring at the
nondescript piece of rubber that held such power. ‘I’ve never heard
of such a thing.’

‘Richard said we can’t rely on it, though,’
Beth said, regret clear in her voice. ‘Things like this help, but
they don’t work every time. So we still have to be careful. We
should be all right with using this thing while I’m feeding Daisy,
especially if we… if Davie… if we sort of stop before…’ She trailed
off, leaving Amy somewhat mystified, but reluctant to ask for more
details.

‘But we’ll have to be a lot more careful
once Daisy’s weaned,’ she went on. ‘Once my bleeding gets back to
normal, that’s when I’ll be really fruitful again. Even with using
this thing we’ll only be able to on the day or two just after my
bleeding finishes every month. But that’s good, isn’t it?’ she
said, turning a pleading face to Amy. ‘That’s much better than
saying we never can ever again.’

It seemed a very long time since the brief
period of Amy’s life when she had found pleasure in such matters.
But she knew that for Beth and David it would mean rigid
self-control.

‘Yes, it’s very good,’ she said, squeezing
Beth’s hand. ‘It’s lucky we had Richard to get that for you.’

Beth closed the lid of the box. ‘Don’t tell
anyone—especially about this thing. I know you wouldn’t gossip,
it’s just that Richard asked us not to say anything about it. Lots
of doctors think it’s awful, you see, for women to have a way to
stop having babies. I don’t see that it’s any of their business,’
she said fiercely, and Amy nodded her agreement. ‘But it’s even in
the law that you’re not meant to send things like this through the
post—they put that in the law last year, Richard said. It should be
all right when it’s doctors sending them, but I’d hate to get
Richard in trouble when he’s been so good about everything.’

‘I won’t say a word.’ Amy wondered how she
could find out Richard’s favourite sort of baking, so she could
make it specially when he was next expected.

*

It was now hard to believe that Beth’s
health had caused so much concern. She spent her days caring for
Daisy, helping David on the farm, and helping Amy in the house, and
seemed to have enough energy to make a fine job of it all. It was
clear to Amy that Beth was ready to run the house on her own. That
meant it was time to consider once again Sarah’s proposal that Amy
should come to live with her.

She chose a day when they were all in the
kitchen lingering over their morning tea to raise the subject.
Daisy was snuggled in David’s lap, her eyes drooping as she drifted
off into a well-fed sleep, one of David’s fingers clutched in her
little fist. Beth stroked Daisy’s hair and shared a contented smile
with David. Amy studied the tableau, feeling her resolve strengthen
as she watched them together.

‘I think I might go up to Auckland soon,’
she announced.

Beth and David turned surprised faces to
her. ‘Again?’ David said. ‘But you were there for ages just last
year.’

‘Sarah wants me to come back, and I think
it’s a good idea.’

‘How long do you think you’ll stay this
time, Aunt Amy?’ Beth asked.

Amy paused for a moment to prepare herself
for their reaction. ‘Actually, I’m thinking of moving up
there.’

They both frowned, puzzled, then looked
startled.

‘Move?’ said David. ‘What, leave the farm
and go up there for good? You can’t do that!’

‘Wouldn’t you miss Daisy?’ Beth asked,
wide-eyed at the notion that anyone could willingly deprive
themselves of her baby’s company.

‘Of course I will. I’ll miss all of you. But
I’ll come back for visits—I don’t want Daisy forgetting me. And
it’s not as far as all that.’ She would simply have to get used to
making that wretched boat trip several times a year; she knew it
was futile to hope she would ever become a better sailor.

Beth looked unconvinced, while David was
clearly troubled. ‘You can’t, Ma. I can’t let you do that.’

‘That’s not up to you to decide, Davie,’ Amy
said. ‘It’s for me to say what I’ll do.’

Now he looked close to distraught. ‘But why
do you want to go away?’

‘I think it’d be better for us all. Sarah’s
in that great big house of hers all by herself, and she wants me to
come and live with her. And it’d be nice for you two to have the
place to yourselves, instead of having me here all the time.’

‘But we
like
having you here,’ Beth
said. ‘I don’t want you to go away because of me! It’ll be like
I’ve chased you away.’ She seemed almost on the verge of tears.

‘Of course you haven’t chased me away. I
just think it’s time I went. And I wouldn’t be able to if you
weren’t here to look after Dave for me.’

‘No,’ David said, shaking his head. ‘You
can’t. You mustn’t. You’re meant to stay here. I don’t want you
going off just because of me and Beth. I don’t want to kick you
out.’

‘You’re not kicking me out. It’s me who’s
decided I want to go.’

David’s distress had communicated itself to
Daisy, who stirred and began whimpering. Beth gathered the baby
onto her own lap to soothe her; David barely seemed to notice.

‘Pa thought I might, you know,’ he said,
speaking rapidly and showing no sign of having heard Amy. ‘He even
put it in his will.’

‘That’s just a thing they put in wills,’ Amy
said. ‘Your father didn’t mean anything by it.’

‘No, he did mean it,’ David insisted. ‘He
told me he was going to have the lawyer put it in—it was one of
those days when he wasn’t muddled. He said I was to look after you,
and he said, “Don’t you go thinking you can kick your ma out as
soon as you get wed. She’s as much right to live here as you have.”
I said of course I wouldn’t kick you out, and he said he’d make
sure I couldn’t.’

‘You never told me that,’ Amy said, taken
aback.

‘It never needed saying before. It does now,
if you think you have to go and live with strangers just because of
us.’

‘Sarah’s not a stranger. She’s… she’s a good
friend to me.’

‘But she’s not
family
,’ David said.
‘If you go up there, it means I’ve shoved you out to go and live
with someone you just met last year. It’s not right. I can’t let
you.’

Not family.
The force of David’s
emotion and the shock of hearing those words robbed Amy of speech.
She clasped her hands tightly in her lap until she felt them stop
shaking. It was clear what she needed to do, but she doubted her
own courage to do it.

‘All right, let’s not talk about it any more
just now,’ she said when she could trust her voice. ‘I didn’t mean
to upset you.’ She rose to take the dishes to the bench, and soon
afterwards David went outside.

*

All through the rest of the day, the task
ahead loomed over Amy. She was sure David and Beth were sincere in
saying they wanted her to stay; she was equally sure they would be
happier on their own. Going to live with Sarah was the right thing
to do; her head and heart agreed on that. But she could not allow
David to feel it was his fault. She could no longer allow him to
think of Sarah as a stranger.

She waited till the evening, when Daisy was
asleep in her cradle and the three of them were in the parlour,
enjoying the warmth of the fire. Beth and David were talking about
the calving that would soon begin, and about their plans for
improving the herd, while Beth stitched at a small tear in one of
David’s shirts. Amy waited for a pause in their conversation, took
a deep breath, and spoke.

‘I need to tell you two something.’

She saw David stiffen, and Beth look at him
in concern. ‘Is this about you going away?’ he asked. ‘I thought we
decided about that.’

‘No, it’s not. Well, in a way…’ It was so
hard to find the right words. They were both watching her, sitting
side by side on the sofa, Beth’s sewing lying forgotten on her lap.
Beth had taken David’s hand, a movement that seemed so natural Amy
suspected she was not even aware she had done it.

The waiting silence hung between them,
daring Amy to break it. Daring her to risk what must be done.

‘Before I married your father,’ she began,
and saw David’s tense expression change to a puzzled one. ‘Before I
even thought of such a thing… there was another man I thought I was
going to marry.’

Now David looked astonished. ‘Who was
it?’

‘No one you know. He wasn’t from Ruatane.
Please… I don’t want you to ask me a lot of questions. This isn’t
easy for me to talk about.’

David opened his mouth as if to press her
further, but at a nudge from Beth he closed it.

‘He asked me to marry him, and I said yes.
But I was only fifteen, and we thought your grandpa would say I was
too young. So he—the man—said we’d better keep it a secret
engagement for a while.’ She saw David and Beth exchange a look,
and was sure they were thinking of their own secret courtship. ‘He
was going to write and ask his father’s permission, then ask
Grandpa, but somehow the time kept drifting on.’

And now came the hardest part.

‘Then one day…’ She found she could not look
at David. Instead she stared into the fire, watching the flames
twisting and writhing as they devoured the dry wood. ‘I told him I
was going to have a baby.’

She thought she heard a sharp intake of
breath from Beth’s side of the couch, but there was not a sound
from David. What would she see if she dared look at his face?
Shock, certainly. But what else? Understanding? Concern? Or disgust
and loathing?

She was not ready to meet what might be
there. Not yet. Not till she had said all she had to. ‘He said he’d
go back to… to where he lived, and tell his father about it, then
he’d come back and tell Pa. I was to keep it a secret till he came
back. So he went, and I waited. I waited a long time. Then I found
out he wasn’t coming back. He didn’t want to marry me. He didn’t
want me, and he didn’t want the baby.’

Amy made herself turn to face David, and saw
blank bewilderment in his eyes, as if her words had been in a
foreign language.

She opened her mouth intending to ask, ‘Do
you think I’m awful now?’ but what came out was the question that
was eating at her heart. She had to know, even though she was
terrified of what the answer might be. ‘Do you still love me,
Davie?’

He hesitated for what might have been a
fraction of a second, but to Amy it felt an age. ‘Of course he
does!’ Beth said fiercely. She prodded David’s arm. ‘Davie, tell
Aunt Amy you do!’

‘Ye-yes. Yes, I do. But…’ He shook his head
helplessly, unable to give voice to all the questions clamouring to
be asked.

‘What a horrible man,’ Beth breathed. ‘Just
leaving you like that, with a baby coming! But what did you do,
Aunt Amy? You must have been so frightened.’

‘Yes, I was. I didn’t know what to do. I was
too scared to tell anyone—that was silly, of course, I knew they’d
find out sooner or later. Your ma was the first person I told,
Beth. It gave her an awful shock, but she was so good about it. She
wanted to help me tell Pa, but I kept putting it off, and saying it
had to be the right time. As if there could be a right time for
something like that.’ She fixed her eyes on Beth as she spoke, only
risking an occasional glance at David. It was easier to face Beth’s
earnest look of sympathy than the bewildered expression David
wore.

‘Then Aunt Susannah noticed, and Pa…’ The
memory of the pain and confusion in her father’s face robbed Amy of
speech for several moments. ‘He was so upset, and I knew it was my
fault. It was… it was a bad time.’

She swallowed, and went on. ‘I knew it upset
Pa just looking at me after that.’ Amy saw Beth nod her
understanding. ‘I couldn’t talk to him about it, that would only
have upset him more. I didn’t have anyone to talk to—your ma wasn’t
allowed to come and see me once everyone found out.

‘Then one day I was wandering around the
farm, just trying to keep out of everyone’s way so they wouldn’t
have to look at me. I wasn’t thinking about where I was going, and
I ended up near the boundary fence. Your father saw me, Davie, and
he could tell there was a baby on the way. He must have thought… I
don’t know. We never really talked about that.

‘Well, he came over a bit later to see Pa,
and he asked if he could marry me.’

‘And you said yes?’ Beth asked.

‘I didn’t want to at first. I was
frightened. I didn’t really know him, I didn’t know what he might…
But Susannah said—I mean, I thought it over, and… I’d upset
everyone so much with what I’d done, especially Pa. And Pa was so
happy at the thought of me getting married—it was as if I could
make it up to him, make up a bit for the bad things I’d done. So I
decided I would. I said yes.’