Mud and Gold (63 page)

‘Yes, make sure you invite them,’ Lizzie
agreed. ‘They’ll probably send a present.’

Sure enough, a few weeks before the wedding
a parcel arrived at the Post and Telegraph Station for Miss Lily
Radford, care of Mr F. Kelly.

‘It’s from Uncle Fred,’ Lily said when Frank
placed the parcel before her. She ripped open the outer layer of
brown paper, revealing a large envelope and a well-wrapped package.
‘Well?’ she asked Frank and Lizzie, her eyes sparkling with
amusement at Lizzie’s eager expression. ‘What shall I open first,
the letter or the present?’

‘The present,’ Lizzie said. ‘Letters can
wait, I want to see what your rich uncle’s sent.’

‘It won’t be anything much, Lizzie, he’s not
really an uncle, remember.’ But Lily duly unwrapped the layers of
paper until she had uncovered a neat enamelled box and a small
silver dish. She studied the gifts with her brow furrowed, opened
the box and drew out one of the small pieces of cardboard it
held.

Lily looked at the card in disbelief,
smiled, then laughed aloud. ‘Oh, Aunt Helen,’ she gasped out
through her mirth. ‘Whatever possessed her?’

‘What are they?’ Lizzie asked. She picked up
one of the cards and peered at it. ‘
 
“Mrs William Leith”,’ she read aloud. ‘That’s
nice, that’ll be your married name.’ She passed the card to Frank,
who looked at it equally blankly. ‘But why would you want a lot of
cards with your name on?’

It took some time for Lily’s merriment to
subside enough for her to explain. ‘They’re visiting cards, Lizzie.
They’re for women who’ve nothing better to do than parade around
town paying calls on other idle women.’

‘Why do you need bits of card to do
that?’

‘Well, this isn’t going to make much sense
because it’s really just a lot of nonsense, but I’ll do my best.
The idea is that you call on someone when you know she’ll be
out—probably paying calls on someone else, in fact. Then you leave
one of these cards to let her know you’ve called.’

‘But why do you call when she’s out? And
couldn’t you just tell whoever comes to the door?’

‘You do tell whoever answers—probably the
parlour maid if it’s someone rich like Aunt Helen. But you leave a
card anyway, that’s the whole point of calling. It’s all to do with
exchanging these cards, that’s why you call when the other lady
will be out. You write on the card to let her know what day you’ll
be “at home”.’

‘Eh? You mean those women are out so much
that they have to write people notes to let them know when they’ll
be at home? When do they get their work done? Their houses must be
a disgrace.’

‘That’s what they have all those servants
for. Not just at home, Lizzie, at home to visitors. They might
decide they’ll receive callers one afternoon, and they’ll leave
these cards telling all their acquaintances what day they can call.
If anyone called any other day, they’d just have the maid tell the
caller that Madam wasn’t home. Oh, and this little tray is to
display all the cards other women have left for you. I believe the
idea is that you only put the most impressive ones on show.’

‘What a load of rubbish,’ said Lizzie.

‘Yes, it is,’ Lily agreed. ‘Aunt Helen’s
obviously never been anywhere like Ruatane. Ah well, I shall have
to write and thank her profusely for her lovely gift. And I’d
better see what she says in the letter.’

There was a smaller envelope inside the
large one, as well as a sheet of writing paper. Lily scanned the
letter quickly.

‘They won’t be coming to the wedding, of
course, but Aunt Helen thanks me very politely for thinking of
them. The rest is all news of her family. Their little girl must be
growing up now, Aunt Helen says she’s going to school. Such a dear
little thing, Sarah was.’ She put the letter to one side. ‘Now,
what’s in here?’

She opened the smaller envelope and pulled
out a folded piece of heavy paper. ‘What’s this?’ Lily asked aloud,
then gasped as she unfolded it. ‘Now
this
is from Uncle
Fred,’ she said brightly. ‘Look at this—it’s a banker’s order.’ She
held the paper up to show them.

‘Ten pounds,’ Frank said, impressed at the
sight. ‘What are you going to do with it, Lily?’

‘Well…’ Lily thought for no more than a few
seconds. ‘I’m going to buy a wedding dress,’ she announced. ‘I
wasn’t going to get a new dress, not when it’d mean Bill’s father
having to pay for it, but now I’ve some money of my own I’ll be
silly and have a dress made.’

‘That’s not silly,’ Lizzie protested. ‘It’s
just sense—you only have a wedding once, you want to make the most
of it.’

‘And I’ve waited long enough for it, haven’t
I? Now, don’t look so eager, Lizzie, I’m not going to go mad. Just
a nice, sensible dress that I can wear for years and years.’

‘You should get a good one for ten pounds,’
Frank remarked idly, thinking of how far that amount would go
towards the improvements he was contemplating for his cow shed.

‘Goodness me, Frank, I’m not going to spend
ten pounds on it! No, I suppose I’d better give the rest to
Bill.’

‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Lizzie said.
‘You’re going to spend all that money on yourself.’

‘I don’t think I should, Lizzie. I mean,
don’t you think I should ask Bill what he wants me to do with it?
I’m afraid I’ll have to get used to asking him things like
that—it’ll be quite strange, I’ve only had my own opinion to
consult for so many years. I’d better get into the habit now, it’ll
save trouble later.’

‘There’s no need to rush, you’re not married
yet. Now, Lily, you’re being a bit silly over this. You know
perfectly well you need all sorts of… well, not things you’d ask
Bill about, not yet anyway… oh, you know,’ she ended feebly. She
grimaced at Frank; he knew it was a signal that she wanted him to
leave them alone. Perhaps she wanted to talk about Lily’s
underclothes. He grinned as he remembered the first time he had
seen Lizzie’s lace-edged drawers, after having wondered for so long
what she kept under her skirts; it had been a delightful
revelation.

‘What do you think, Frank?’ Lily asked.
Frank glanced guiltily at her, wondering if she had read his
thoughts.

‘About what?’ he asked.

‘What should I do about the money? I thought
perhaps Bill could use it towards our wedding, so his father won’t
have to pay for it all. You’re a man, tell me what you think Bill
would want.’

It was a heavy responsibility, and Frank
considered the question carefully. ‘Well, I can’t say for sure what
Bill would think. But if Lizzie got a bit of money of her own, I
know what I’d want.’

‘More fancy cows,’ Lizzie put in, raising
her eyes heavenwards. Frank ignored her pert remark.

‘I’d want her to spend the lot on things for
herself, the sillier the better. Heck, Lily, Bill doesn’t want
money from you—he’d probably be a bit put out if you offered it to
him. So would Arthur, come to that. I think you should buy yourself
a whole lot of pretty things. Bill will enjoy seeing them,’ he
added daringly before leaving the two women to plan Lily’s
trousseau in fine detail.

*

December brought the end of the school year,
and two weeks later came the day of the wedding.

The warm, golden light of the late afternoon
sun gave a richness to the green of the valley as Frank drove the
family up to Arthur’s house, Lily on the front seat beside him in
her dove grey silk dress while Lizzie and the children squashed
themselves into the back seat for the short drive. The small group
of guests was waiting on the lawn when the Kellys arrived. Frank
saw Bill smiling at them from the verandah, Alf looking
uncomfortable in his good suit at Bill’s side. Lily’s cheeks were
pink and her eyes shining as Frank helped her down from the buggy.
She took Maudie by the hand, and slipped her other arm through
Frank’s.

Lizzie gave Lily a kiss, issued a stern
warning to Maudie, who was the bridesmaid, to walk like a little
lady, then shepherded the other two children over to the knot of
guests.

‘Ready?’ Frank asked. Lily nodded, fixing
him with a brilliant smile, and for the first time Frank decided
that perhaps she was just a little bit pretty. ‘I didn’t think I’d
be giving any girls away for a few years yet, you know,’ he told
her with a grin. The three of them began their stately procession
across the garden and up to the verandah where Bill waited.

After the service, the Leith family began
the celebrations welcoming their newest member. Despite his
grumbling, with such a small wedding Arthur had found little enough
to spend money on. The bulk of the food had been produced on the
farm, and killing one more sheep than usual was no hardship; nor
was serving up one of the large hams from the larder. Edie had used
a vast amount of dried fruit for the wedding cake, but that was the
only thing she had had to buy specially from the store.

Determined to show that he welcomed Lily’s
arrival, Arthur had been careful to provide a generous amount of
beer; far more than the eight grown men at the wedding could
reasonably be expected to consume. It was not his fault that one of
the men had no intention of being reasonable.

Amy had been pleased at the chance of an
outing with her family, but she almost wished she had not come when
she saw how heavily Charlie was drinking. She turned her back on
him, determined not to let him spoil the day for her.

Not that it was ever possible to ignore his
brooding presence completely. She could not show any but the
coolest of interest in her male cousins, and had to duck her head
away when Bill attempted to kiss her, instead taking his hand and
shaking it. She had laid down one new rule of her own for her
marriage, but she would still do her best to obey all the rest of
Charlie’s orders, however unreasonable they were. To flout any of
his rules would be to risk goading him into breaking hers.

She found plenty to talk about with the
other women; getting permission from Charlie to leave the house was
always haphazard, and over the previous three weeks he had decided
to be more difficult than usual, refusing even to let her visit her
father’s house. Lizzie had been too busy organising Lily to have
had time to come and see Amy, so she had had no congenial adult
company for some time.

Amy thought she detected a slight bulge in
Jane’s front, so it was no great surprise when Jane whispered to
her that she would be having her third baby the following June.

‘Madam’s got wind of it,’ Jane said,
indicating Susannah with a toss of her head. Susannah glanced over
at them from where she sat with Edie, and Amy saw her purse her
lips in disapproval. ‘She said to me the other day what a shame it
was that I wouldn’t be able to come to this—she looked down her
nose well and truly when I told her I was coming all right, but I
just gave her a look like
this
.’ Amy laughed at Jane’s
fierce grimace. ‘I’m not showing yet—well, not so that men would
notice, they’re half blind about that sort of thing. I told Harry
that Madam didn’t think I should come—you should have heard what he
said about her. I had to tell him off, using language like that in
front of the girls. It’s a good thing he doesn’t speak to Susannah,
or she’d learn some new words.’

‘I don’t know, Jane, I think he used them
all to her face before he stopped speaking to her. I bet he’s
pleased about the new baby.’

‘Oh, yes, men always seem to act as though
they’ve done it all by themselves.’ Jane looked over at Harry, who
was explaining in fine detail to Frank his plans for extending his
house. ‘I hope it’s a boy this time,’ she confided. ‘Harry loves
the girls, and he never let on he was a bit disappointed when
Esther came along, but I know he’d love to have a son. Well, it
stands to reason, doesn’t it? Men always want sons.’

‘Charlie did,’ Amy agreed. ‘He wasn’t
interested in having daughters.’ She realised she had put Charlie’s
days of fathering children into the past tense, but if Jane had
noticed her slip she gave no sign of it.

Lizzie soon joined them, and shared the news
of her own new pregnancy. Amy saw the other two women study her
flat belly then glance at David, now nearly four and a half. She
knew her family all wondered why she had had no more babies since
Alexander; she had no intention of satisfying their curiosity and
thereby exposing Charlie to ridicule. Let them think she had become
barren; she might as well be, since she would never bear another
child.

She looked over at the group of children
running about in the garden, ranging in age from Jane and Harry’s
seventeen-month-old Esther up to nine-year-old Thomas. It would be
hard to watch the other women with their new babies; especially if
either of them had a pretty little dark-haired girl. Now that David
was so visibly a little boy, she felt as though she had lost her
window on what Ann must look like. It had been a little like losing
her all over again.

‘Amy? Are you all right?’ Lizzie’s voice
interrupted her reverie.

‘What? Oh, yes, I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure?’ Lizzie pressed. ‘You haven’t
been having any… any trouble at home, have you?’

‘No, Lizzie, I haven’t. I’m perfectly all
right.’

‘You just looked a bit down in the mouth.
You look well, though. You know, I think you’ve grown a bit taller
the last few months.’

‘Lizzie, what a silly thing to say! I’m much
too old to be growing. Anyway, I was just thinking about
something.’

‘Something sad?’ Jane asked. ‘You looked a
bit upset.’

‘Did I? Well, I shouldn’t have,’ Amy said.
‘Today’s a really happy day, Bill and Lily don’t want long faces at
their wedding.’ She looked at the newly-weds sitting side by side
on the verandah, and it was easy to smile at the sight. ‘They look
so happy, don’t they?’