Mud and Gold (43 page)

‘I wouldn’t know, Mrs Coulson,’ Lizzie said,
answering rather too quickly. ‘I’d better be going now.’ Something
in her manner made Mrs Coulson look at her sharply. Oh, yes she
did. Lizzie Kelly knew something, all right.

Lizzie left the room, and Mrs Coulson stared
after her thoughtfully. Was there more to Amy’s semi-conscious
ramblings than she had assumed? Whatever the guilty secret Jack
Leith’s family was hiding, Amy’s cousin knew as much about it as
anyone.

‘None of your business,’ Mrs Coulson
muttered to herself. ‘Don’t poke your nose into other people’s
affairs.’ But her eyes kept drifting towards the door that led to
where Amy lay, while her mind turned over half-formed
conjectures.

*

Frank was walking around Amy’s little
garden, steadying Joey with one hand and matching his pace to the
little boy’s uncertain steps while Maudie clung to Frank’s free
hand.

‘Hurry up, Frank, I want to go now,’ Lizzie
called as she clambered into the buggy.

‘So you’ve had enough outings for today?’
Frank said when he had unhitched the horses and started down the
track. ‘I thought you might want me to take you into town while
you’re about it, so you could run up and down the street for a
bit.’

‘Don’t be so silly.’ Lizzie frowned in
thought and did not speak again for some time. Frank shot her a
look that was meant to be stern and was met with a glare in
return.

Maudie sat between her parents and looked
wide-eyed from one to the other. At last she could contain herself
no longer. She tugged on Frank’s sleeve until he looked down at
her. She beckoned to him to lower his head before she spoke in a
hoarse whisper.

‘Have you been naughty, Papa?’ she asked,
glancing apprehensively at her mother.

‘No, Maudie,’ Frank replied in an equally
audible whisper. ‘Mama’s been naughty.’ Lizzie looked straight
ahead, pretending not to hear either of them, but Frank saw her
eyes flick in their direction.

‘Oh!’ Maudie tried to take in the magnitude
of this idea. ‘Are you going to give her a smack?’

‘I don’t know, love,’ Frank said solemnly.
‘It depends if she keeps on being naughty or not.’ A toss of her
head was the only response Lizzie made.

Lizzie gathered up the children as soon as
they had reached home and Frank had lifted the three of them to the
ground. She was about to take them into the house when Frank
reached out for her arm.

‘Go inside, Maudie,’ he told the little
girl. ‘Go on, don’t be nosy,’ he added, giving her a small push
when she showed more inclination to stay where she was.

‘Lizzie,’ he said when their only audience
was the oblivious Joey, ‘don’t do that again. I mean it.’

‘Don’t do what?’ Lizzie said
indignantly.

‘You know what I mean. Don’t force me to let
you do something I don’t want to. I only took you to Amy’s because
you threatened to go rushing up there by yourself.’

‘Don’t be so bossy! Anyway, I’m not sick
like you keep making out. I’m only having a baby, for goodness
sake!’

‘Yes, well, you shouldn’t really be having
this baby, you know. It’s only because I couldn’t keep my hands off
you.’ Frank abandoned sternness and slipped an arm around Lizzie’s
shoulders. ‘I worry about you, Lizzie.’

Lizzie relaxed against his arm. ‘I didn’t
exactly try and fight you off, did I? Don’t worry about me. There’s
no need, honestly there’s not.’

‘Well, will you behave yourself? Take things
a bit easy, no more going visiting till the baby’s come?’

Lizzie sighed. ‘I didn’t do her any good
going to see her, anyway. I can’t give her back her baby, and
that’s the only thing that would really help. She needs something
to love. I might as well have stayed home.’

Frank took this as acquiescence, and was
satisfied Lizzie had seen sense. So he was all the more astonished
two days later when she announced that she wanted to visit Amy once
again.

‘Lizzie, I thought we agreed,’ Frank said
helplessly. ‘You said you’d take things easy.’

‘No, I didn’t.
You
said I would. Shut
up a minute and listen. I know I shouldn’t be going out, but this
is important. I promise if you take me up there once more—just this
once—I’ll stay home and not complain until the baby’s born. Cross
my heart I will. Please, Frank,’ she begged, taking hold of his
hands and looking at him with a pleading expression Frank had no
weapon against, especially when he saw tears forming in her
eyes.

He sighed. ‘If I don’t say yes I suppose
you’ll only threaten to go by yourself again. You’d better mean it,
though, Lizzie. No more tricks like this.’

‘Of course not. I’ve promised, haven’t
I?’

‘Yes. And I’ll keep you to it.’

When he helped Lizzie into the buggy, Frank
was startled to see that she held a small ginger kitten in one
hand. ‘That’s one of Tab’s latest litter, isn’t it? What are you
doing with it?’

‘He’s a present. Hurry up, I want to be back
in time to get lunch on.’

Charlie was filling a jug of water from the
rain barrel when they pulled up. ‘I’m just going to pop in and see
Amy for a minute, Charlie,’ Lizzie said. ‘We won’t stay for a cup
of tea, thanks—I see you’re just getting water for one,’ she added
impertinently.

‘Those women from next door don’t seem to
bother fetching the water,’ Charlie grumbled. ‘What have you got
there?’ he asked, eyeing the kitten suspiciously.

‘This? It’s a kitten,’ Lizzie said, all
wide-eyed innocence. ‘I meant to get Frank to tell you—when I was
up the other day I saw a couple of mice hanging around your safe.’
It was the first Frank had heard of it; and, he suspected, the
first the mice had heard of it. ‘You want to watch that, Charlie,
mice can gnaw right through a safe quick as look at it.’

‘Mice?’ Charlie echoed in alarm. ‘I hadn’t
noticed any.’

‘Oh, you would have noticed them soon
enough. So I thought I’d better bring you a cat. We’ve got plenty.
Don’t let me keep you talking, I’m sure you’re busy,’ she said,
sweeping past Charlie and into the house.

*

There were dark rings under Amy’s eyes that
betrayed sleepless nights, and she looked at Lizzie with a strange,
faraway expression. Recognition took several seconds to reach her
eyes.

‘I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,
Lizzie,’ she said wearily. ‘I hope you’re not going to try and talk
about my babies again. I don’t talk about them. I don’t make a
fuss.’

‘I’m not going to talk about anything,’
Lizzie said briskly. ‘I’m not even staying.’ She walked to the bed
and kissed Amy’s cheek. ‘Our Tab’s had seven kittens, she can’t
feed them all properly. You’ll be doing me a favour if you take
one, it’ll save Frank drowning it. Here you are.’ She placed the
kitten on the blanket over Amy’s chest. ‘I’ll be off, then.’ With
that, Lizzie was gone as suddenly as she had arrived.

Amy looked down at the tiny kitten. It mewed
feebly, with a sound that Amy fought against recognising. It was
far too much like the cry of a tiny baby. She reached out to push
the kitten away from her, but her fingers brushed against fur as
soft as baby’s hair.

Almost against her will, her hand stroked
the kitten. Its mewing stopped, and the kitten made its laborious
way up the blanket towards Amy’s face, hooking its claws into the
cloth to steady itself as it went. It reached its goal and pressed
its nose against Amy’s cheek, giving a questioning little miaow.
Amy stroked it again and again, feeling the vibration of the purr
that was too soft for her ears to catch. A tiny pink tongue reached
out and tickled her face as the kitten licked at the salt tears
that had begun to trickle down Amy’s cheeks.

August – December 1889

Before she returned home, Mrs Coulson
impressed on Amy that she should stay in bed for at least two
weeks. But it was less than a week after Alexander’s birth and
death when Amy announced to Charlie that she was well enough to get
up.

‘So you’ll be able to bring the boys home,
Charlie. Could you fetch them today, please?’ she asked, ignoring
the grinding discomfort she still felt when she moved about. ‘I
don’t want Susannah looking after them. She doesn’t like
children.’

Charlie took her assertion of good health at
face value, and did not need persuading to want his sons back. He
collected the boys that same morning. Amy studied them anxiously,
but neither child seemed much the worse for their time away from
home. David spent the first few days not wanting to let Amy out of
his sight, and he climbed onto her lap whenever she sat down for
long enough to give him the chance; but he was soon reassured that
his mother was not going to become ill again suddenly, nor was he
to be sent away next door for some mysterious reason.

David was enraptured at the sight of Amy’s
kitten sitting on her lap when Charlie brought the boys home.

‘Pussy cat!’ he said in delight. ‘My pussy
cat?’

‘No, Davie,’ Amy said with a smile, ruffling
David’s curls as she held a possessive hand over the tiny kitten.
‘He’s my pussy cat. But I’ll share him with you. His name’s Ginger.
Look, I’ll show you how to stroke him—you have to be very gentle,
because he’s so little.’ She took hold of David’s hand and guided
it down Ginger’s back, but David did not need to be taught. He
touched the kitten with a gentleness that seemed instinctive, and
Ginger learned to purr at the sight of David as quickly as he
learned to hide under Amy’s skirts and out of the reach of anyone’s
boot if he happened to be in the kitchen when Charlie’s heavy tread
sounded on the doorstep or Malcolm bounded into the room.

*

Frank kept an anxious watch over Lizzie as
her pregnancy advanced, alternating between looking forward to the
new baby’s arrival and feeling guilty that there was to be another
child so soon. Lizzie seemed healthy enough, but it distressed him
to see her working as hard as ever while she got bigger and more
awkward.

‘Do you have to do that, Lizzie?’ he asked
when he found her scrubbing the kitchen floor one day in her
seventh month.

‘Yes, I do,’ Lizzie said firmly. ‘I won’t be
able to do it at all when I get a bit bigger, but I’m going to make
sure it’s clean as long as I can manage. I’m not having dirty
floors in my house, thank you.’

‘Well, maybe I could—’

‘No, you couldn’t,’ Lizzie interrupted.
‘You’ve never scrubbed a floor in your life, there’s no need for
you to start learning now. Anyway, it’s my job. I don’t go out
ploughing paddocks, do I?’

‘No, but I’m not having a baby, am I?’

‘Anyone would think you were, you’re making
such a fuss about this one. It’s my third baby, Frank, I should
know what I’m doing by now.’

‘You know what you’re doing, all right. I
just wish… oh, I don’t know. I wish I could make things easier for
you, that’s all.’

‘I’m not complaining, am I? Stop talking
rubbish, Frank. And don’t you dare walk on the wet part,’ she
warned as she returned to her scrubbing with renewed vigour.

*

Frank did not stop worrying over Lizzie’s
health until November came at last and with it the arrival of their
second daughter. The birth was as uneventful as either of the baby
girl’s parents could have wished, and for the first time in months
Frank could forget his feeling of guilt and indulge in the delight
of being a father once again.

‘What are you going to call her?’ Amy asked
when she had admired the tiny girl with her fuzz of brown hair.

‘Oh, I’ve had a lot of trouble with Frank
over that,’ Lizzie said, smiling fondly at her new daughter. ‘We
thought… well, I know this sounds a bit soft, but I wasn’t really
meant to have another baby just yet, so she’s sort of a special
present for us. So we want her to have both our names.’

‘Where’s the trouble, then?’ Amy said. ‘You
knew what to call her straight away.’

‘Well, yes, but I wanted Frances Elizabeth,
and Frank wanted Elizabeth Frances.’

‘I see.’ Amy smiled knowingly at her cousin.
‘She must be Frances Elizabeth, then, if that’s what you want.’

She was surprised when Lizzie hesitated in
answering. ‘Oh, Frank can be silly about things like that. He gets
really soft sometimes. So I thought if it means that much to him,
and it doesn’t really matter… well, she’s Elizabeth Frances.’

Amy laughed aloud. ‘You mean you let Frank
win? That must have given him a shock. And two Lizzies in the one
house? Two in the one valley will be a bit much!’

‘She won’t be Lizzie, that’s too confusing.
She’ll be Beth. And less of your cheek, Mrs Stewart. Anyway, I
think Beth’s going to be more like Frank. She looks like him, don’t
you think? Her mouth’s just the same as Frank’s.’

Amy had never considered Frank’s mouth to be
at all like the sweet little cupid’s bow Beth had, but she humoured
Lizzie. ‘Yes, she’ll probably be just like Frank. I don’t think
she’ll have much hope of bossing anyone around, not with you and
Maudie in the house. Maudie even starts telling Davie what to do as
soon as she sees him.’

‘He lets her get away with it. Joey doesn’t
take the least bit of notice, so that’s good for her.’

‘Mmm, it’ll teach her to be clever about it,
like you are.’

Lizzie pulled a face at Amy but did not
bother arguing. ‘What have you done with your boys?’

‘Frank took Davie as soon as he saw us
coming up the road. He’s got the three of them out in the paddock
with him—Maudie, Davie and Joey all on the one horse! I don’t think
the horse has really noticed, he’s still pulling away at the plough
as if there was no one on his back. Davie’s smiling all over his
face at having a ride on the big horse. Frank’s wonderful with
children, isn’t he?’