Mud and Gold

by Shayne Parkinson

  Work doesn’t get done by standing around thinking about it. That’s what Granny used to say. She turned from the sight of Maudie trotting briskly away and went into the kitchen, the heat of the sunny room washing over her like a wave. I don’t suppose women who wear dresses all covered in lace and embroidery ever do scrub floors.

  *

  ‘What’s wrong with Amy?’ Frank asked as soon as Maudie had ridden away with Amy clinging on behind her.

  Lizzie glanced at Beth watching them with interest. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said, and Frank left it at that.

  Maudie persuaded her mother to let her stay up later than usual that evening so that she could sit on her father’s lap, and Frank knew better than to ask again about Amy with such an attentive audience. Lizzie finally sent Maudie to bed, and suggested an early night to Frank.

  Lizzie undressed and put on her nightgown, then sat in front of the mirror brushing her hair. Frank watched her from the edge of the bed, wondering at her pensiveness. Perhaps she was anxious about Amy.

  ‘Is Amy poorly?’ he asked. ‘She’s not expecting, is she?’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Lizzie said, not turning away from the mirror, though the brush paused in its movement through her hair. ‘I asked her about that again the other day, she just laughs me off and says I’m having enough babies for the whole valley.’

  ‘So why did she take that funny turn? Has that old so-and-so been knocking her around again?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know if she’d tell me if he did, mind you. But whenever I ask her if she’s having any trouble like that she says he never hits her any more. I suppose I’ve got to believe her.’

  ‘Good. That great lump of a man thumping a little scrap like her. I’ll never forget how she was when you were sick.’ He stood and walked the few steps to Lizzie, and rubbed her shoulders. ‘I think she’s almost as fond of you as I am.’

  Lizzie took one of his hands in hers for a moment, then began brushing her hair more rapidly, pulling at it almost roughly. After a few strokes she slapped the brush down on the dressing table and turned to face him.

  ‘Frank, I’m going to tell you a secret,’ she said, so solemn that Frank had to laugh.

  ‘Secret? I didn’t think you had any secrets from me.’ He let his hands slide down her arms towards her waist. ‘I don’t know where you keep them hidden.’

  Lizzie twisted out of his grasp. ‘No, listen properly, or I won’t tell you. I haven’t got any secrets—not from you, anyway. This one isn’t mine to tell. It’s Amy’s.’

  ‘Then you’d better not tell me,’ Frank said, suddenly serious.

  Lizzie sighed. ‘I think I had better. I’ve been thinking about it all evening. I don’t want you upsetting Amy like you did today. She’s got enough to put up with.’

  ‘Me?’ Frank said, startled. ‘I didn’t mean to upset her. What did I do?’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t know any better. That’s why I’m going to tell you—so you’ll know not to do it again.’

  Frank waited for Lizzie to speak, but having announced her intention, she seemed reluctant.

  ‘Put out the lamp and hop in bed,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t want to talk loud.’

  Frank did as she said, and Lizzie pressed close to him so that her mouth was beside his ear.

  ‘You remember that summer Jimmy was here,’ she began in a whisper.

  ‘I should do,’ Frank said, smiling into the darkness. ‘That was the summer we started courting properly.’

  ‘Yes, we did. That was half the trouble—I was so busy thinking about you that I didn’t take as much notice as I should have of Amy.’

  Lizzie fell silent again. ‘Well, Jimmy was doing his own sort of courting,’ she went on after a long pause. ‘You must remember the way him and Amy were hanging around each other all summer.’

  ‘I was too busy watching you,’ Frank murmured in her ear. He cast his mind back ten years, remembering the tall young man with the infectious laugh, and the way Amy had been like his shadow while they were bringing in the hay on the Leith farms. ‘I suppose they were. And at that dance—he thumped Mike Feenan because Mike was giving Amy trouble.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But hang on, Lizzie—you’re not saying Amy got upset just because they had a bit of a romance ten years ago and I reminded her of it? Heck, she’s been married for years and she’s got two kids—she’s surely not still pining for Jimmy!’

  ‘I hope not,’ Lizzie said. ‘He’s not worth it.’

  ‘So why did she get upset today?’

  Lizzie sighed. ‘It was more than a bit of a romance—as far as Amy was concerned, anyway. Amy… well, she sort of feels things stronger than other people. When she loves someone she puts her whole soul into it. She loved him, Frank. He didn’t deserve it, but she loved him. And then he asked her to marry him.’

  ‘Did he? I never knew that! Did she turn him down?’

  ‘Of course she didn’t! She was absolutely besotted with him—she would have crawled a mile on her hands and knees if he’d asked her to. She said yes, all right. She believed him.’

  ‘So why didn’t they get married? Did her pa break it up?’

  ‘He never knew about it. Not till it was too late, anyway. Jimmy told Amy it’d have to be a secret engagement for a while, and she went along with it. She was so young, Frank! She believed everything he said. And then he ran off and left her.’

  ‘Just ran off with no warning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was pretty mean! Even if he’d changed his mind about marrying her, he could have let her down gently.’

  ‘That man didn’t care about anyone but himself. That’s why he deserted her instead of facing up to his duty. He took what he wanted, and then…’ Lizzie trailed off, and when she started speaking again her voice was so quiet that Frank could hardly hear her. ‘Then he ran away. Because she told him she was going to have a baby.’

  A jolt ran through Frank. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you dare think badly of her,’ Lizzie said fiercely. ‘It wasn’t her fault—it wasn’t!’

  ‘I shook his hand the other day,’ Frank said, his voice unsteady. ‘I shook the bastard’s hand. I should have knocked him down into the gutter. To leave her like that, and her carrying his child!’

  ‘He might have knocked you down first. He was a lot bigger than you.’

  ‘Huh!’ Frank said in disgust. ‘He was all right when he was down here, but I don’t think he’s done a day’s real work since. His hand was just about as soft as his wife’s when I shook it. Hey, it’s no wonder he looked worried when he spotted me—he must have thought I knew what he’d done.’

  ‘Probably. We’ve managed to keep it pretty secret.’

  ‘But… hang on,’ Frank said, struggling to rearrange the assumptions he had made about Amy over the years into some sort of sense after Lizzie’s revelations. ‘You’re not saying Mal’s Jimmy’s son, are you?’

  ‘Of course not. Don’t be stupid, Frank, you can count on your fingers as well as I can. Mal was born nine months after Amy married Charlie, and he’s the image of his father, anyway.’

  ‘What happened to the baby, then? Did she lose it?’

  ‘Yes, she did. But not the way you mean it.’ Lizzie’s voice trembled a little. ‘That was before I’d had babies myself, I didn’t understand it properly then. I thought it was a good idea about her baby. I thought it was for the best.’

  ‘Hey, don’t get upset, Lizzie,’ Frank soothed, stroking her arm.

  ‘You remember how I kept telling you she was sick for months? That’s when she was with child. And then they sent her up to Auckland, to get her out of sight. She had the baby, and they made her give it away. Give her away—it was a little girl.’ Frank heard Lizzie gulp back a sob.

  ‘That must have been hard on her, giving away her baby.’

  ‘I think it just about broke her heart. She had no fight left in her aft
er that—she hadn’t had much even before the baby was born, not after Aunt Susannah had had a good go at her. Aunt Susannah arranged it all. She made Amy do it. She made her marry Charlie.’

  ‘Why did she want her to do that?’

  ‘To get her out of sight. Aunt Susannah told Amy she was so dirty and ruined that no one would ever want her—no one but Charlie, anyway. She got it into Amy’s head that it’d make Uncle Jack happy if she married Charlie. So she did. And she’s been paying for it ever since.’

  They lay together in silence while Frank absorbed the enormity of what Lizzie had told him. Amy was always gentle and kind. And she loved Lizzie almost as much as Frank did himself; that in itself would be reason enough for him to be as fond of her as if she were a sister. ‘And I made her think about all that again today,’ Frank said. ‘I wish I could say sorry. That’d only make it worse, though, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it would. Pretend you still don’t know, Frank.’

  ‘I don’t know how she’s borne it, all these years. That ratbag deserting her like that. And having her baby taken off her—that must be hard on a woman. And she didn’t even want to marry Charlie, then he goes knocking her around. She must be tougher than she looks.’

  ‘She is. She’s the strongest person I know.’

  34

  April – December 1894

  With a combination of bribery and reminders of the wrath he would face from his father if he failed his Standard One examination again, Amy managed to cajole Malcolm into letting her give him occasional lessons all through that year. Though she racked her brain to make the lessons interesting, she could not raise any spark in him of her own love of books for the sake of the window they opened on the wider world. It did not surprise her; she had never been able to discern anything of herself in Malcolm.

  But Amy could see that the sporadic lessons were doing some good. By hunting through her books and Charlie’s newspapers for any references to horses, she had managed to teach Malcolm to recognise an increasing range of words. She taught him writing by having him copy out the names of all the farm horses on sheets of paper she saved from the wrappings of their weekly supplies. When he had written them out neatly enough she helped him nail the decorated sheets onto the boys’ bedroom wall. And the simple arithmetic that was all he would need to pass his examination she taught by writing out several different prices of horses from newspaper advertisements and showing him how to compare the amounts.

  It was the best she could hope to achieve with Malcolm, and Amy tried to be satisfied with it. David could not be left out of these lessons; in fact he entered into them with enthusiasm, and it was soon obvious that he would have no trouble at all passing his Standard One test that year. He had caught up with his brother despite the two years between them, and there was a strong chance that he would eventually pass Malcolm at school.

  Not that Malcolm would mind if his younger brother did pass him; except that his father would make him mind, Amy reflected. Malcolm hated school; she almost had to push him out the door on school mornings, and he would usually come home scowling and full of complaints about whatever Miss Metcalf had tried to make him do.

  Which made it all the more suspicious the day Malcolm came home half an hour after David and grinning smugly. When quizzed by Amy, David had said that he did not know where Malcolm was, but he would be home soon; pressed further, David had begun to look distressed, and Amy had left him in peace, guessing that he had been sworn to secrecy.

  ‘Where on earth have you been all this time, Mal?’ Amy demanded when Malcolm finally swaggered through the back door.

  ‘At school,’ he said, eyeing her boldly.

  ‘You haven’t been at school till after half-past-three, have you? Dave’s been home for ages.’

  ‘I didn’t tell on you, Mal,’ David said.

  ‘Shut up,’ Malcolm said, directing a scowl at his younger brother. ‘Anyway, you can’t stop me doing what I want,’ he told Amy.

  ‘It’s not me you have to worry about. Mal, you mustn’t go wandering off by yourself. You know how wild your pa would be if he found out—you’re just lucky he hasn’t come up for his afternoon tea yet. I know you like to go off riding—well, you just can’t on school days. Come on, hurry up and put your working clothes on before your pa gets here.’

  She took his arm to hurry him through the house, but Malcolm shook her hand off.

  ‘I can get changed by myself,’ he said. ‘I don’t need you hanging around me.’

  ‘I want to see that you don’t muck about. Hurry, Mal.’ She gave him a push to send him on his way, and followed closely on his heels as he went through the kitchen and parlour, then out the front door to his bedroom, David trailing along in their wake. ‘There’s a funny smell on your clothes, too. You’ll have to wear a clean shirt tomorrow, and you haven’t got many left till wash day.’

  Ignoring Malcolm’s protests that he would rather do it by himself, Amy unbuttoned his shirt while he undid his trousers. She sniffed at the shirt and frowned. The smell was familiar, but not one she associated with Malcolm.

  Realisation came abruptly. Amy grabbed at his arm and pulled him towards her. He was too taken aback to pull away before she had got a good whiff of his breath.

  ‘Mal!’ she said in horror, ‘you smell of beer! You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’

  ‘You leave me alone,’ Malcolm said. He took a step away and glared at her.

  Amy took hold of his shoulders and gripped them hard as he tried to wrench himself free. She had to resist the urge to slap him. ‘Listen to me, Malcolm. You might think it’s grown up and clever to drink beer, but it’s not. Drink is a terrible, terrible thing. Men go… well, sort of mad when they drink a lot. They don’t know what they’re doing, and they do things they didn’t mean to. And it’s too late afterwards to wish they hadn’t.’

  ‘Pa drinks,’ Malcolm said.

  ‘Yes, and look how grumpy he gets when he has a lot to drink.’

  ‘He’s always grumpy.’

  ‘He’s a lot worse when he’s drunk,’ said Amy. ‘I don’t want you to be like that.’

  ‘Des says that’s the only time his Grandpa isn’t grumpy, when he gets drunk. His Grandpa never belts them when he’s got some whisky, and he sings songs about Ireland.’

  ‘What about his pa, Mal?’ David asked. ‘Does he get grumpy like our pa?’

  ‘Des hasn’t got a pa.’

  David looked confused. ‘Why not? Everyone’s got a pa.’

  Malcolm shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Des says he never had one.’

  ‘So you’ve been out with that Des Feenan, have you?’ Amy pursed her lips. ‘Did you sneak off from school with him?’

  ‘Huh! I never went to school today. I just left Dave there and went off and met Des and his brother. They pinched some beer off Des’s Uncle Mike and they let me have a bit of it. It was nice.’

  ‘Mal wouldn’t take me,’ David said plaintively. ‘He said I was too little.’

  ‘At least you had that much sense, Mal. Don’t you dare take Dave off with that boy. And you shouldn’t be going yourself, either. For goodness sake, don’t you want to get out of Standard One this year?’

  ‘You said you could teach me enough so I’d pass.’

  ‘I can’t do miracles. You’ve got to do a bit of work yourself. You haven’t let me help you for a couple of weeks, and if you won’t even go to school you’ll never pass.’

  ‘I’ll go sometimes,’ Malcolm muttered. He looked away from her and said grudgingly, ‘We can do some reading tomorrow if you want.’

  ‘We’d better, if I’m ever going to get you through that exam. Mal, I wish you wouldn’t hang around with those Feenans. And drinking beer with them! I didn’t think you’d be so stupid.’

  ‘They’re fun. And I don’t have to do what you say. You’re just a silly—’

  Amy put a hand over his mouth. ‘Don’t call me names, or I just might tell your pa what you’ve been up to. Just
because he drinks doesn’t mean he wants you to when you’re not even nine yet. And I’m not that bad word, either. I’m your mother, and you shouldn’t talk to me like that.’ At least I know who fathered my children, not like those Feenan girls.

  There was little time to waste on trying to convince Malcolm of the folly of what he had done. She put a clean shirt on him and began buttoning it up while Malcolm pulled on his old trousers.

  ‘You must have spilt half that beer down your front, from the smell of you. Better than drinking it, I suppose, but the smell lasts longer. It’s quite strong,’ she fretted. ‘Your pa might notice it.’ She stopped her buttoning abruptly. ‘I’ll have to see he doesn’t.’

  She hurried from the room, and returned moments later with a small bottle of lavender water that Lizzie had given her for her birthday the previous year. She had the stopper out and had sprinkled the perfume liberally over Malcolm before he had time to take a step backwards.

  ‘Pooh, that stinks!’ he complained.

  ‘So do you. I’m covering up one stink with a nicer one.’ She flung some of the perfume over her bodice and put her arms around Malcolm, resisting his attempts to pull away. ‘Hold still a minute and let me give you a cuddle.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Malcolm said, trying to twist out of her grip. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’ll do my best to keep you out of trouble, Mal, but I’m not going to tell lies for you.’

  Amy barely had the boys dressed in their work clothes and in the kitchen ready for their father when Charlie came through the back door.