Settling the Account (17 page)

Frank stared at the rug under his feet and
thought about his own daughters, secure in the warmth and shelter
of a loving home. The idea of any young girl ending up as one of
the Royal Hotel’s whores did not bear thinking of. ‘This Maisie’s
had a rough spin, hasn’t she?’

‘Go and see her, Mr Kelly,’ Mrs Coulson
urged. ‘It can’t do any harm just to meet the girl and see for
yourself if you think she’d do for the job.’

‘I suppose not.’ The trouble was, Frank
thought to himself, no matter how unsuitable she might be it was
not going to be very easy to say no to this Maisie.

*

Frank climbed down from his spring cart to
study the ground before him. At the sight of the deep ruts he
admitted defeat. The track to the Feenans looked rough enough to
provide a challenge to a pack horse, let alone any sort of wheeled
vehicle.

He knotted the reins and left the horse to
snatch what grazing it could from the rank weeds that grew beside
the track; Grey was too steady a beast for Frank to worry that he
might wander. After giving the big gelding a pat on the neck, Frank
set off on foot towards what looked from this distance more like a
heap of discarded timber than a dwelling.

There was certainly nothing worthy of the
name of pasture in the rough paddocks around the track that might
tempt Grey towards sweeter grazing. A few morose-looking sheep
cropped the weeds in a dejected fashion, so scrawny that they
looked as though it would take the whole flock to make a decent
meal for a family. The Feenan farm was close to the sand-hills that
marked the edge of the beach, and the sandy soil did not support
anything recognisable as grass. At times the water table rose high
enough for brackish water to seep into the lowest of the paddocks,
killing off what green stuff had managed to take root.

As he drew close to the house, a frenzied
barking interspersed with snarls started up. Frank’s steps
faltered, but he reasoned that the dog would already have him by
the throat if it were roaming free, so it must be chained. Of
course, if someone chose to let it off the chain… Well, he could
not hope to outrun a large dog for long enough to reach his horse,
so it was too late now to think of taking to his heels.

The remains of a fence lay in front of the
house. Frank looked around for a gate of some sort, then gave up
and clambered over the sprawl of rotten wood, the task made harder
by the bramble that had worked its way into the ruin of the fence.
He could now see the dog that was making so much noise, a beast of
dubious ancestry that strained at the length of rope tied around
its neck. Frank hoped the rope was stronger than it looked, but as
he eyed the dog uncertainly a stream of abuse issued from the
house. The dog lay down on the ground, contenting itself with
growling under its breath.

There was a large field of potatoes near the
house; the only obvious source of food within sight. A disturbed
patch of ground inside the fence looked as if it might once have
been a vegetable garden, but the only trace of its former role was
a knotted vine with a few rotten pumpkins along its length. The
smell that met Frank’s nose as he approached told him the Feenan’s
privy was not only closer to the house than most people considered
desirable, but had also not been dug deeply enough to deserve the
usual name of ‘long drop’. That smell was challenged by a noisome
pile of refuse beside the house; Frank did not study it closely,
but he could not avoid noticing the hordes of flies crawling over
the waste heap.

Climbing onto the house’s verandah presented
something of a challenge; if there had ever been steps, they had
long since collapsed. Frank reached out to grab at a post to haul
himself up, pulling his hand back just in time when he noticed the
post had snapped through the middle so that its upper and lower
sections pointed in different directions. He wondered briefly how
the roof of the verandah managed to stay upright, but a glance at
the said roof told him ‘upright’ was too generous a term.

He clambered onto the verandah and walked up
to the front door, which was hanging drunkenly from its one
surviving hinge. Knocking on the door itself seemed likely to
detach it altogether, so Frank banged on the wall near the
doorway.

He waited for what seemed a long time, then
banged again.

‘All right, don’t knock the flaming door
down,’ someone grumbled. The door was dragged open a crack, and a
woman peered around its edge. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘Um, I wanted to see…’ Frank realised that
he had no idea what Maisie’s father’s name was. Asking for ‘Mr
Feenan’ would undoubtedly be too general to be useful. ‘Is Maisie’s
father home?’

‘Ah, the useless bugger never stirs
far—except to go to the pub when he’s got a few shillings. Kieran!’
she yelled, so loudly that Frank gave a start, but there was no
answer from inside.

‘The lazy sod’s asleep by the fire,’ the
woman said. ‘He had a skinful of some gut-rot last night, he’s
still sleeping it off.’ She looked Frank up and down with an
appraising stare that made him feel vaguely uncomfortable, as if he
had left his trouser buttons unfastened. ‘I’m Bridie,’ she
volunteered.

Bridie Feenan looked to be several years
older than Lizzie, though it was hard to tell through the black
veil of hair that hung over most of her face, defying the pins
thrust haphazardly into the mass. The boniness of her shoulders
showed through her dress, and there was a rip in the bodice that
had been roughly pinned. She might once have been pretty, but there
was no trace of it left except in the brightness of her eyes.

‘Frank Kelly. Pleased to meet you.’ He
extended a hand, then let it drop awkwardly when Bridie made no
move to take it. ‘I need to see… Kieran, was it? Is he your
brother?’

‘So me mam always maintained. Is it money
you’re after from him? You might as well clear off right now if it
is.’

‘Oh, no, nothing like that. I just want to
talk to him about Maisie.’

Bridie gave him the same appraising stare.
‘She’s a bit young for you, isn’t she?’ She laughed at his
discomfiture. ‘You’d better come in, then.’

She moved away from the door and turned to
walk down the dim passage. Pausing only to check that his buttons
were indeed safely fastened, Frank followed. After he caught an
inadvertent glimpse of Bridie’s legs through the long rent in the
back of her skirt, he was careful not to look at her as she led the
way.

A man who looked to be in his early forties
lay slumped in a chair near the open fireplace that clearly served
as cooking facility.

‘Kieran,’ Bridie shouted, leaning close to
him. ‘Here’s a fellow come to see you. Says his name’s Frank
Kelly.’

Kieran stirred a little, then settled more
comfortably. ‘Tell him to bugger off,’ he muttered.

‘He won’t bugger off till he’s talked to
you. Something about Maisie.’

Kieran opened his eyes a fraction, put one
arm over his face as the light hit them, then cautiously lowered
his arm and scowled at Frank. ‘What’s the little baggage been up
to?’

‘Nothing,’ Frank said. ‘I’ve never met her.
I just wondered… it’s for my wife, really, except she doesn’t know
about it yet… I wondered if Maisie would like a job.’

‘You want to pay for the girl?’ Kieran
asked, his face lighting up with interest.

‘Oh, yes, I’d pay her all right. I want
someone to help my wife around the house, just three days a week.
Washing and ironing, and scrubbing, all that sort of business.’
Frank’s eyes were drawn to the rough wooden floor, where mud and
food stains alternated to form a lurid pattern. That floor showed
no sign of ever having made the acquaintance of a scrubbing brush.
‘I was thinking I’d give her three shillings a week to start off
with—only if she’s suitable, though,’ he added hastily.

‘Three shillings, eh? She’ll be suitable,
all right,’ Kieran said. ‘When do you want her to start?’

‘Um, I’d like to see her first,’ Frank
hedged. ‘I want to be sure she’s the sort of girl my wife’s
after.’

‘Where’s the little trollop sneaked off to?’
Kieran demanded of his sister. Bridie shrugged. ‘Well, find her!
Are you deaf, woman? This fellow wants to pay money for her!’

Bridie disappeared through the back door.
She was gone long enough for Frank to look around the kitchen,
though he soon wished he had not. A huge saucepan full of potatoes
stood near the fire, waiting to be put on to boil. Although the
potatoes had been given a cursory peeling, judging from the clods
of dirt that floated above them washing had not formed part of
their preparation. Various unidentifiable portions of animal
entrails lay on the table (which was only marginally cleaner than
the floor); they looked like the sort of scraps Lizzie would throw
to the cats, though the flies crawling over them seemed
enthusiastic enough.

‘Where have you been, you useless baggage?’
Kieran shouted as Bridie returned, propelling ahead of her a small
girl whom Frank assumed must be Maisie. With a sudden burst of
energy, Kieran rose from his chair and crossed to the doorway in
two strides. He took a handful of Maisie’s hair and dragged her by
it into the centre of the room. ‘Here’s a fellow wants you to go
and work for him,’ he told his daughter.

Frank studied Maisie with a sinking heart.
She was tiny; not as tall as Maudie, and far slighter. Her hair
fell matted around her face, so low on her forehead that it was
difficult to see her eyes at first glance. Her whole face seemed to
be spread with a layer of grime, with more clearly delineated
patches of dirt on her chin and both cheeks. Her dress only had one
sleeve, a ragged-edged armhole showing where the other sleeve had
once been attached, and the longest of the skirt’s tattered edges
barely reached her grubby knees.

Maisie turned such a baleful glare on Frank
that he almost quailed before it, until he studied her more
closely. The girl had managed to school her face into an expression
of defiance, but what looked out of those dark, brooding eyes was
naked fear.

‘Don’t want to,’ she muttered. Her head
jerked to one side as her father’s hand lashed against her cheek,
leaving a red mark visible through the dirt, but she did not utter
a sound.

‘You ungrateful little bitch,’ Kieran
roared. ‘Don’t you be telling me what you do and don’t want. You’ll
do as I say, girl.’ He took hold of Maisie’s arm and forced it up
behind her back until she winced, though she still made no sound.
‘Tell the man you want to go and work for him.’ He yanked Maisie’s
arm higher. ‘Tell him!’

‘Hey, there’s no need for that,’ Frank said,
resisting the urge to plant his fist in the man’s face. ‘If she
doesn’t want the job it doesn’t matter. Let go of her arm, eh?’

‘She’ll want it, all right,’ Kieran said,
giving his daughter a menacing look, but he released Maisie’s arm,
where his thick fingers had left clear, red impressions on the pale
skin. She rubbed at her skinny arm and stared at Frank.

‘She’s very young,’ Frank said doubtfully.
Maisie did not look the sort of sturdy girl he had pictured helping
Lizzie carry loads of wet washing.

‘She’s fourteen, though I’ll grant you she
doesn’t look it,’ Bridie said.

‘Always was a little runt, right from when
she was born,’ Kieran put in. ‘She’s tougher than she looks,
though. She’ll do the work you want her for.’

Frank studied the waif in front of him and
sighed inwardly. Maisie seemed as unsuitable a girl as he could
possibly have imagined, but he knew that if he rejected her she
would pay the price in her father’s wrath.

‘Shall I tell you what I want you to do,
Maisie?’ he asked. He would gladly have taken her into his arms for
the sort of cuddle his own daughters delighted in, but that would
only frighten her more. ‘My wife’s very busy, you see. We’ve got
six little ones, and she’s so much washing and cleaning to do, I
thought it’d be good if I could get someone to give her a hand. Do
you think you could do that? Come around to our house three days a
week to help Mrs Kelly?’

‘Maisie knows all about washing and all
that,’ Kieran said expansively, though his own shirt bore no sign
of ever having been laundered. ‘She’s the girl for you.’

Maisie stared hard at Frank. ‘All right,’
she said, and he felt he had passed some sort of test. ‘When do I
come?’

‘Start tomorrow if you like, that’s one of
Lizzie’s scrubbing days. Do you know the track up the Waituhi
Valley?’

‘No,’ Maisie said, her glare making him feel
irrationally guilty.

‘It’s easy to find—you just head down the
coast till you come to a good-sized creek, then turn up the valley.
Mine’s the first farm you come to. It’s not that long a ride.’

‘Can’t ride,’ Maisie said shortly.

‘Hmm, it’s a bit far to walk.’

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Kieran cut in.
‘She’s a great walker, our Maisie. She’ll be there tomorrow, all
right.’

‘I’ll be looking out for you, Maisie,’ Frank
said. He smiled at her, and was rewarded with a slightly less
baleful glare.

He drove his cart away from the Feenan’s
with a sense of escape, breathing deeply of the fresh air. This was
not a place he would willingly return to, he thought as he glanced
back over his shoulder. He was sure Maisie would be grateful for
the chance to escape from it three days a week once she got used to
the ways of more civilised people.

But his sense of relief was short-lived.
True, he had got away from vicious dogs and drunken Irishmen
unscathed, but that was no reason to feel so confident. Now he had
to break the news to Lizzie.

January 1898

Frank carefully avoided any mention of his
morning’s visit, and Lizzie was too busy with her own concerns to
notice any evasiveness on his part. It was not just reluctance to
raise the subject before he had to; he did not want to give her the
opportunity to send him straight back to the Feenans to tell Maisie
that their arrangement was off.