Mud and Gold (64 page)

‘Mmm,’ said Lizzie. ‘They’re a good match,
all right. It was silly, Lily struggling on looking after other
people’s children when what she really needs is to get on and have
some of her own.’

David ran over to Amy and began to clamber
onto her lap. ‘Can I have another cake, Mama?’ he asked, looking up
at her with the wide-eyed smile of anticipation that she could
never resist.

‘Don’t climb up on me, Davie, you know Papa
says you mustn’t do that any more. Of course you can have one,
there’s plenty. You go inside and ask Aunt Edie—she’s in the
parlour. Come out and eat it on the grass, though, you mustn’t drop
crumbs on Aunt Edie’s rugs.’ She glanced over swiftly to check that
Charlie was not watching, then gave David a quick squeeze and a
kiss before he ran up the steps and into the house in search of his
aunt.

There was no risk of Charlie’s noticing her
forbidden ‘babying’ of David; he was far too engrossed in his beer.
While the other men filled their mugs from time to time at the
barrel that stood under a shady karaka tree, Charlie had not moved
more than a few feet from it ever since the service had ended.

The day cooled pleasantly as the sun dipped
towards the hills. The noise of the children’s voices faded
gradually as, one by one, they found spots well out of the way of
large, careless feet and lay down, tired out with playing.

Amy saw Jack and Arthur wander over towards
the beer, deep in conversation as they walked. Arthur filled both
mugs, and the men stood under the tree and chatted for a few
minutes longer. But when Charlie forced himself on their attention
by pouring himself yet another drink Jack gave him a look of
disgust and walked away.

He dragged a chair close to Amy and sat down
beside her. ‘How’s my girl?’ he asked, resting his arm across her
shoulders. Haven’t seen you in weeks, except at church.’

Amy leaned her head against his chest. ‘I
know, it’s been hard for me to get out just lately. You should come
over and see me sometimes, maybe bring Tom and George now school’s
finished.’

‘I might just do that. I worry about you
when I don’t see you, girl.’

‘You shouldn’t, Pa, there’s no need.
Everything’s fine, really it is. You come over tomorrow—I’ll make
some of those ginger biscuits you used to like if you promise to
come.’

‘I haven’t had those in years,’ Jack said.
‘I don’t think I’ve had them since you went away.’

‘Maybe I’ll give the recipe to Sophie—no, I
won’t,’ Amy amended. ‘That way I can talk you into coming and
visiting me a bit more often.’

Arthur was still leaning against the tree
trunk, sipping his beer. Amy saw her uncle cast an occasional
irritated glance in Charlie’s direction. He took a step or two
closer and made a comment on the weather, which Charlie did not
answer. After a short silence, Arthur spoke again.

‘Go a bit easy on the drink, eh, Charlie,’
he said with a joviality that was clearly forced. ‘Leave some for
the rest of us.’

Charlie muttered something that Amy did not
catch. He drained his mug, but made no move to fill it again.

‘That’s right, let one lot hit bottom before
you send the next one down to join it,’ Arthur said. He topped up
his own mug and leaned against the tree trunk again. ‘If you kept
downing it at that rate you might find your wife having to carry
you home.’

Charlie looked grimly at Arthur, then shot a
black look in Amy’s direction. She turned her head away, but not
before she had seen him shape the word ‘bitch’ at her.

‘Hey, hey, there’s no need for that sort of
talk,’ Arthur remonstrated. ‘I think you’ve had enough for one
night.’ His eyes flicked to Amy just long enough for her to see the
sympathy in them, then he scowled at Charlie, his face full of
disgust. Amy realised with a jolt that her father must have told
Arthur about the beating.

‘She’s a
bitch
,’ Charlie said, his
voice easily reaching Amy and her three companions. ‘Sour-faced
little tart. She’s—’

‘That’s enough, Charlie,’ Jack said. ‘Speak
to my daughter with a bit of respect or keep your mouth shut. I’ll
shut it for you if you don’t.’

Amy reached out and put her hand over his.
‘It’s all right,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t take any notice.’

‘I’m not going to listen to him talking to
you like that, girl.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Pa,’ Amy said. She
squeezed her father’s hand. ‘It’s only talk, nothing else. Nothing
else,’ she repeated. ‘Words don’t hurt, not really.’ She looked
over her father’s shoulder to see Charlie muttering to himself, but
his eyes shied away from Jack’s and he said nothing audible.

‘I think perhaps we’d better go home now,’
Amy said. She turned to Lizzie and Jane to see them both looking a
little shaken as well as, in Lizzie’s case, furious. ‘I’m sorry,’
she told them; but it was not an apology, merely an expression of
regret that the other women had had to witness the unpleasant
scene. ‘Now, where are those boys of mine?’

‘I don’t want to see you going off by
yourself with him,’ Jack fretted.

Amy slid out from under his arm and took
both his hands in hers. ‘Pa, you mustn’t worry about me,’ she said,
looking up into his troubled eyes. ‘It’s all right, I promise it
is. He won’t do anything but talk, and he won’t even do that for
much longer tonight. He’ll go to sleep as soon as I get him home,
then in the morning he’ll wake up with a sore head feeling sorry
for himself.’

She planted a kiss on her father’s cheek and
stood up. ‘Come and see me tomorrow, I’ll be expecting you. Bye
bye, Jane, and you too, Lizzie—don’t look so fierce, Lizzie!’ She
kissed them both and went searching for her children, whom she
found sleeping in a corner of the verandah.

Leading a drowsy child with each hand, she
walked up to Charlie. ‘Do you want to go home now?’ she asked.

Charlie glanced from Arthur to Jack, who
were both glowering darkly at him, and it was obvious even to him
that if he did not take the opportunity Amy held out of leaving
with some dignity the two men would take great pleasure in evicting
him, and quite possibly keeping his wife and sons behind.

‘Aye, we’ll go now,’ he said. ‘Hurry
up.’

‘We’re ready now.’ She turned to wave to her
father, then walked off beside Charlie.

For once it was not hard for her to match
his pace. The beer was taking its toll; he had to put much of his
attention into treading at all steadily. They walked in silence,
and Amy concentrated on guiding the sleepy little boys’ steps,
carrying David for the last stretch up the track to Charlie’s
cottage.

She led the boys through to their bedroom
and undressed them. Both children were half asleep by the time she
had tucked them in; she even managed to steal a kiss from Malcolm.
While she got the children into bed she listened for the sound of
Charlie making his own way through the house, but she did not hear
him come any closer than the kitchen. So he was going to be silly;
it was no more than she had expected from the way he had behaved at
her uncle’s.

She closed the boys’ door softly, then went
through the parlour and into the kitchen. Sure enough, Charlie was
sitting at the table. He had lit a candle and stuck it roughly into
a candlestick; Amy corrected its precarious angle before
speaking.

‘Pa’s coming over tomorrow,’ she said, as if
it were of only slight interest. ‘Do you want something, Charlie?’
She spoke in the same calm voice she had used to him earlier. ‘I’ll
make you a cup of tea if you like.’

‘Bitch,’ he muttered. ‘Miserable little
bitch.’

‘I mixed the bread this afternoon before we
went out, so I’ve no need to sit up now. But I’ll make you some tea
if you want. And would you like a biscuit? Or maybe a sandwich?
What would you like?’

‘I want my rights, that’s what.’

‘Charlie, I’ve said all I’m going to about
rights. There’s no sense going on and on about it. Now, if you
don’t want me to get you any supper I’m going to bed.’ She took a
candle from a shelf and lit it from the one on the table. ‘Do you
want any supper or not?’

‘Dirty little whore. You’re a useless,
good-for-nothing trollop.’

‘I’m not listening, Charlie.’ She walked
across the room, shielding her candle from the draught with one
hand.

‘Stupid bitch of a woman. Sour, tight little
bitch.’

Amy went through her bedroom door and looked
back at him. ‘Good night.’ She shut the door on the sight of his
scowling face.

December 1891

The hangover he woke with the morning after
Bill and Lily’s wedding left Charlie rather subdued all that day,
but he had fully recovered from his overindulgence by the following
Sunday, when Bill and Lily made their first appearance at church as
a married couple. As she watched the newly-weds talking to
well-wishers after the service Amy noticed the way their fingers
sought excuses to brush against each other’s hands and arms, and
she smiled to herself. Bill and Lily were happy, and they did not
mind the world’s knowing it.

Amy saw Charlie cast a scowl over his
shoulder at Bill and Lily as he started the gig homewards.
He’s
jealous
.
He’s thinking about Bill and Lily, and what they’ve
been doing at night. I hope he’s not going to carry on silly
again
.

‘She’s nothing to look at,’ Charlie
muttered.

‘Lily’s very nice,’ said Amy.

Charlie directed his scowl at her instead of
at Bill and Lily, over the heads of the two boys squeezed between
them. ‘Aye, maybe she is. Not a sour little tart like some.’

‘What’s a tart, Mama?’ David asked, looking
up at her expectantly.

‘It’s something nice to eat, Davie,’ Amy
said. ‘It’s like a pie with no top. I might make an apple tart for
pudding tomorrow—I’ll put lots of sugar in, then it won’t be sour.’
Charlie scowled more fiercely than ever, but said nothing more
about tarts, sour or otherwise.

Amy was up at five o’clock the next morning
to start the weekly washing. She paused from hauling piles of
steaming hot clothes between the tubs to get morning tea ready,
calling Malcolm and David down from the tree they were playing in
as she walked back to the cottage.

Charlie was already sitting at the table
when she went into the kitchen with the boys. She expected him to
complain at having been kept waiting a few minutes, but he seemed
too busy rummaging in his pockets to take much notice of their
arrival. She put the kettle on to boil and got the tea things
ready.

Charlie brought his hands out of his pockets
and formed a small heap of coins on the table in front of him. He
muttered his calculations aloud as he laboriously counted the
coins, then counted them again, clearly dissatisfied with the first
answer.

‘I thought I had more than that,’ he
grumbled to himself. ‘I’ll have to go to the bloody bank, try and
talk that miserable beggar of a manager into letting me have a bit
until the cream cheque comes.’ He began to count the coins a third
time.

Amy poured the tea, and put his cup beside
the small pile. She took her own seat at the other end of the
table. As she let one hand drop into her lap she felt a small lump
in the pocket of her apron.

‘These were in your trousers,’ she said,
pulling out the two coins she had found when checking Charlie’s
pockets before hurling his trousers into the copper. She placed the
coins before him. ‘A sixpence and a threepenny bit.’

Charlie snatched at the coins and added them
to his little hoard. ‘That should do it,’ he said, studying the
pile with some complacency.

‘What do you want money for?’ Amy asked,
taking a sip of her tea. It was rarely that she saw cash; the
provisions of the household were always bought on credit at the
store.

‘Mind your own business, nosy bitch,’ was
all the reply he gave her, but remembering his mood of the day
before it was no great surprise to Amy when Charlie, having
finished his tea, pushed back his chair and announced that he was
going into town.

‘I see,’ Amy said, clearing away the cups
without looking at him. The boys hovered around her as she stepped
over to the bench, eager to beg another biscuit each.
So whores
have to be paid in cash, do they?
‘I suppose you’ll have lunch
there?’

‘I might.’

‘Can I come, Pa?’ Malcolm asked.

‘No, you can’t,’ said Charlie.

‘But I want to. I want to go with you. Why
do I have to stay with her?’

‘Don’t you whine at me, boy,’ Charlie
growled. Malcolm had the sense to take a step backwards out of his
father’s range. He did not dare complain again in Charlie’s
hearing, but his face wore a black scowl.

‘I wanted to go with Pa,’ he muttered when
Charlie had gone outside to catch his horse.

‘Well, you can’t,’ said Amy. ‘Don’t pull
such awful faces, Mal, the wind might change and you’ll be stuck
like that. Now, don’t get under my feet, I’ve got to get the
washing finished.’

She went outside, the two boys trailing
after her. Charlie had saddled up his bay gelding and was mounting.
As she watched he rode away without looking back at them.

‘I wonder why he’s not riding Smokey,’ Amy
remarked. The grey was always Charlie’s preferred mount.

‘Smokey’s a bit stiff, so Pa doesn’t want to
ride him far today. Pa told me that when we were milking yesterday
afternoon,’ Malcolm said, full of self-importance. ‘You don’t know
anything about horses.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that, Mal. I used to
ride every day when I was little, I know more about horses than you
do.’

‘No, you don’t,’ Malcolm said. ‘You’re just
a silly bitch.’

Amy turned on her heel, took hold of Malcolm
by the sleeve and gave him a slap on the bottom. ‘Don’t you dare
say that to me,’ she told the startled child. ‘I don’t ever want to
hear language like that from you again.’