‘You?’ Charlie spat in disgust. ‘A little runt like you? I’d break your arm before you knew what had hit you.’
Charlie was a head taller than Frank, but twenty years older. Frank was not sure what the outcome of a fight might be, but he felt willing to give it a try. He smelt the sour odour of the older man’s sweat, and saw his massive fists. Frank caught a glimpse of Amy’s worried face out of the corner of his eye, and remembered Lizzie’s description of that little face bruised and bloodied by those same huge fists.
‘Well, at least I don’t go knocking around women half my size,’ he flung at Charlie.
The silence around them grew more tense, and Charlie’s face turned grimmer than ever. ‘What business is that of yours?’ he snarled. ‘Keep your nose out of my affairs or I’ll teach you to—’
‘That’s enough, you fellows,’ Arthur said, striding up and interposing his body between the antagonists. ‘This is a birthday party, not a bar for you to brawl in.’ He met Charlie’s black stare with one far sterner, holding his gaze until Charlie turned away and affected indifference. ‘You’re only here because of Amy,’ he told Charlie. ‘If you don’t want to behave, you can take yourself home. No one’ll miss you.’
He turned his back on Charlie. ‘Frank, you can behave yourself, too. Carrying on like an idiot! Go and sit down,’ he said, giving Frank a cuff on the shoulder to emphasise his words. ‘And you can apologise to your Uncle Jack—giving him all this bother on his birthday,’ he called after him as Frank made his way back to the rest of the family.
‘Sorry,’ Frank mumbled in Jack’s direction, but Jack waved his apology aside. Frank saw Susannah staring at him with a disdainful expression, and her mouth shaped a word that might have been ‘animals’. She then made a show of looking in the other direction, thin-lipped with disapproval.
Already regretting his outburst, Frank dropped to the ground beside Lizzie. When he met her eyes he regretted it far more. Lizzie glared at him, barely able to speak for the anger that was making her eyes flash. She would not make a fuss in front of everyone, but there was going to be trouble later, Frank realised with a sinking feeling.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, rowing with Charlie like that?’ she hissed under her breath.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Frank. ‘He was saying things about you, and I got wild. I was just trying to shut him up.’
‘Yes, and making more trouble for Amy. That’s just what she needs, isn’t it? You putting the old so-and-so in a worse temper than usual.’
‘I didn’t mean to—he shouldn’t have gone on like he did.’ Frank caught Amy’s eye to send a silent apology, and was relieved to see that she appeared surprisingly calm. She even managed to direct a small, rueful smile in his direction. ‘She looks all right, anyway.’
‘No thanks to you,’ Lizzie shot back.
*
Amy watched Charlie settle himself against a tree trunk beside the beer, then turned her attention back to Harry. ‘Funny how we can’t have a family get-together without a row,’ she said, smiling to make a joke of it. ‘Never mind, I think some of you think the fights are the best part. No wonder Susannah looks so disgusted with us all.’
‘What’d he mean?’ Harry demanded. ‘What’d Frank mean about knocking around women?’
‘Don’t go making a fuss, there’s no need. You’ll upset Pa if you go on about it.’
Harry was not to be put off. ‘What’d he mean? Has that old bugger been thumping you?’
‘Leave it, Harry,’ Amy said. ‘It’s all right.’
‘If he’s laid a finger on you—’
‘Harry,’ Amy interrupted, ‘I want you to leave it. Please?’
She let her hand rest on his arm, gripping it more tightly to be sure of his full attention. Harry’s eyes darted from her to Charlie and back again, and she felt the muscles of his arm tense as he clenched his fist.
But Harry was no longer the fiery twenty-year-old with no one but himself to think about that he had been ten years before. The responsibilities of a wife and four children had had a steadying effect on him, and he had learned a degree of self-control that his family would hardly have believed possible once.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t do anything about him just now. Not in front of everyone.’ He sent a baleful glare in Charlie’s direction. ‘I’ll leave it till a better time.’
He raised his voice to be sure Charlie would hear. ‘Maybe I’ll come over and see you some time soon, Amy. John’ll come with me, I expect. If there’s anything troubling you, we should be able to sort it out. We might come tomorrow.’
‘There’s nothing troubling me,’ said Amy. ‘But you and John are welcome to come over any time you want.’ Impulsively, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly. ‘You’re a dear—even if you do like to make a fuss about nothing.’
Amy released Harry and smiled. It was good to know that if the power of her threat to leave Charlie ever wavered, the thought of the vengeance her father and brothers would exact would not be far from his mind.
She looked over at Charlie, and could not help feeling a little sorry for him in his so obvious isolation. But feeling sorry for him was vastly preferable to being frightened of him.
I haven’t got anything to be frightened of now. After so many years of wariness and fear, it was difficult to comprehend their absence.
35
December 1894 – May 1895
After the fracas at their father’s birthday party, Amy saw more of her older brothers than she had since her marriage. Their first visit to Charlie’s house took place the morning after the party. Harry was determined to elicit the details of what Charlie had done to deserve Frank’s invective, and Amy was equally determined to avoid trouble. She eventually admitted that Charlie had, indeed, hit her in the past; at the same time assuring them that that had been long ago, and there was no risk of any more such violence.
Charlie had wisely made himself scarce as soon as he caught sight of Amy’s brothers approaching. John and Harry looked grim at her revelation; Harry scolded her, and said she should have told them when Charlie had first hit her. He insisted that she do so if anything of the sort ever happened again.
‘Maybe we should sort him out anyway, just to let him know what he’ll get if he tries anything like that again,’ Harry said, and John looked ready to go along with the idea. But they allowed themselves to be persuaded by Amy to let well enough alone.
That visit was the first of many. Harry and John took to popping over together or, more often, alone, for unannounced visits. Since Jack also now made a habit of dropping in on Amy, hardly a week went by without her enjoying the company of one or other of her family.
She had worried that after his skirmish with Frank Charlie might forbid her to have anything to do with Lizzie, but that fear was soon laid to rest. Charlie, it seemed, saw the incident as a humiliating defeat, and chose to pretend it had never happened.
To her huge relief, Malcolm managed to pass his Standard One examination, as did David, so Malcolm was safe from that particular focus of his father’s wrath for at least another year. Charlie had not yet become aware of Malcolm’s occasional truancy; Amy resigned herself to the knowledge that it could only be a matter of time before he did discover it. But there was no sense worrying about that before she had to.
Her life had assumed a sort of tranquillity that Amy could not in strict honesty call happiness, but was content to make do with. There was no more fear, and no more vain yearning for what might have been; or at least if there was still yearning, she had buried it too deeply for it to give pain. The moments of affection she managed to snatch with David, already few and far between, were becoming even rarer as the boy grew up and spent more of his time with his father and brother, but she accepted that as inevitable. She knew David loved her as much as he ever had, even if he was learning not to show it so openly.
Contentment was not the stuff of dreams, but it was
sufficient; it had to be. It was in May that Amy discovered just how fragile her tranquillity was.
*
Charlie had gone into town by himself that morning to get the supplies; the briefness of his absence told Amy that he had not paid a visit to the hotel. After lunch he lingered for a short time over the newspaper he had brought home, then dropped it on the floor as he rose to leave.
Left alone, Amy picked up the crumpled newspaper. A minute or two scanning the main stories; that was all she intended to allow herself. But it took only seconds before her eyes were caught by a story that made her give a sharp intake of breath, then stop breathing altogether until her body forced her to expel the stale air and take a great gulp to replace it.
‘No,’ she whispered, her eyes wide with horror. ‘What have I done? What have I done to my baby?’
*
Frank had collected a copy of the same newspaper when he and Lizzie had done their shopping that morning, and over lunch he glanced at it. The pages of farming items were what he usually found most interesting, but he let his eyes run over the news stories first, and stopped at the most dramatic one.
‘Hey, listen to this, Lizzie.’ He spread the newspaper flat on the table and began reading snatches aloud.
‘ “Shocking case… woman charged with murder… two bodies in garden—” ’
‘Frank, don’t ramble on. Tell me the story so it makes sense, not just bits and pieces like that.’
‘All right.’ Frank read ahead, then looked up from the paper to check that Lizzie was still listening. ‘It’s about this woman down south somewhere—Winton, the place’s called, I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Neither have I,’ said Lizzie. ‘It can’t be much of a place.’
‘No. Anyway, she had all these babies at her place—not her own, other people’s babies. She was meant to be looking after them, but apparently she was doing them in and burying them in the garden.’
‘She didn’t! Does it really say that, Frank?’
‘It sure does. They’re going to hang her, it says. Well, they’ll have a trial first, but it sounds like she’s guilty, all right. That’ll be the first time they’ve ever hanged a woman in New Zealand.’
‘She must be mad or something. What were people doing, leaving their babies with a madwoman?’
Frank shrugged. ‘I suppose they didn’t know she was crazy. It says in the paper there’s a lot of women doing what she did—not killing the babies, just looking after them for money. Baby farming, they call it.’
‘Looking after them for money?’ Lizzie frowned. ‘Why would anyone pay that woman to look after babies?’
Frank glanced down at the paper again. ‘Well, it says the mothers were mostly girls with no husbands. This Minnie Dean woman would find people to adopt the babies, and the mothers would give her money to look after their babies until someone adopted them. Maybe she got sick of looking after them all. They think there’s a lot of these baby farmers around—they say the government’s going to do something about it. It’s awful, eh?’
He raised his eyes from the newspaper, and was startled to see that Lizzie had gone pale.
‘Hey, don’t get upset,’ he said, reaching across the table to take hold of her unresponsive hand. ‘I didn’t mean to worry you, reading that stuff out. It’s probably a load of rubbish, anyway—you know what the papers are like.’
Lizzie’s first words when she recovered her voice startled Frank. ‘Saddle up one of the horses for me.’
‘Eh? What do you want me to do that for? You haven’t even finished your pudding yet.’
‘Now, Danny shouldn’t wake up for half an hour or so as long as you don’t go making too much noise. You can put Mickey down as soon as he finishes his pudding—hurry up, Mickey, don’t play with your food,’ she exhorted the three-year-old. She took hold of his bowl and began spooning food into his mouth, talking to Frank as she did so. ‘Give Danny some bread and milk when he wakes up, that should keep him quiet till I get home. I might be a while, but you’ll just have to wait till Maudie’s back from school to look after the little ones before you can go out on the farm.’ She looked over her shoulder and frowned. ‘Don’t just sit there, Frank! Hurry up and get that horse ready for me.’
‘Where are you going?’ Frank asked.
‘Use your head! How do you think Amy’s going to feel about all this?’
‘All what? You mean that story in the paper? What’s it got to do with Amy?’
‘Don’t be so stupid! Of course it—’ Lizzie stopped abruptly, and pulled a face. ‘No, I’m the one who’s being stupid, not you. I never did tell you the ins and outs. You know that trouble of Amy’s before she got married? Well, she tried a few times to talk to me about it when she first came home from Auckland. I used to just shut her up. I thought she was upsetting herself more, thinking about it all the time.’
‘That’s probably right,’ said Frank.
‘Maybe. I’m not so sure now. Anyway, she told me that when she was in the nursing home some woman came to see her. Aunt Susannah had arranged it, apparently. The woman came and talked to Amy, then later she came back and took the little one away. She told Amy she took little ones like that—you know, with no fathers—and found people to adopt them. Uncle Jack gave her money to do it for Amy’s.’ She looked seriously at Frank. ‘Now do you see why I’ve got to go up and see her?’
‘You think the woman was like the one in the paper?’ Frank asked, shaken.
‘I don’t know. But I know what Amy’ll be thinking.’
*
Amy felt hands gripping her arms, shaking her. Her eyes gradually focussed on the figure leaning over her. Lizzie? What’s Lizzie doing here?
‘Poor love.’ The distress in Lizzie’s voice drew Amy into full awareness of her surroundings. She found that she had slid from her chair on to the floor and was slumped against one leg of the table, the newspaper still clutched in one hand. ‘Come on, get up,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’ll help you.’
Amy’s body seemed to have gone limp, but Lizzie managed to lift her onto the chair. ‘There, that’s better, isn’t it?’ Lizzie said.
‘She’s dead,’ Amy said bleakly. ‘They’ve killed her. They’ve cut her throat and buried her in the ground. I gave her away, and now she’s dead.’ She collapsed against Lizzie’s encircling arms, her body racked with sobs.
Lizzie held her close and made crooning noises. When the flood of tears began to subside, she eased her grip.
‘You don’t know that, Amy. You’ve no reason to think anything awful happened to her. Just because there was one mad woman down south, it doesn’t mean they’re all like that.’
‘No, I don’t know,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t know if she’s dead or alive, or if she’s being looked after, or anything. I gave her away. That tiny little thing, all soft and trusting, and I gave her away to a woman I’d never seen before.’
‘It was because you wanted the best for her—that’s why you did it. You wanted her to have a good home.’
The kind rationality in Lizzie’s voice stabbed like cruelty. ‘The best for her? To be murdered and thrown in someone’s garden like a bit of old meat?’ Amy fought for a moment against Lizzie’s embrace, then went limp, too weak to struggle.
‘I could bear it, you see,’ she said, her voice muffled against Lizzie’s shoulder. ‘I could bear not being allowed to keep Ann as long as I could think about her, and imagine them making a fuss of her. How she’d be dressed in pretty clothes and have fancy dolls and things, and how they’d love her. I thought they’d love her nearly as much as I did. I do love her,’ she whispered. ‘And now I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. I don’t know if I can bear it.’
‘Amy, don’t. You’ll make yourself ill or something.’
‘I can’t help it. I keep seeing her lying on my lap looking up at me, then lying all still like she’s dead.’ Amy gave a violent shudder, and made an effort to calm her voice. ‘I’ll come right in a bit, Lizzie—I’ll hav
e to, won’t I? I can’t sit about feeling sorry for myself all day. You go off home now, I’ll be all right.’
‘No, I’m going to take you home with me for a bit,’ Lizzie said, suddenly decisive. ‘Just so you can have some peace and quiet.’
‘I can’t,’ Amy said, shaking her head.
‘Yes, you can.’
‘Lizzie, I can’t just wander off with you like that—it’s lovely of you to worry about me, and I’m sorry I haven’t been very grateful, but I’ve got to stay here. I’ve baking to do, and I’ll have to start getting dinner on in an hour or so. The boys’ll be home in a while, too, and they’ll be after something to eat. And Charlie’ll want his afternoon tea, I’ve got to make something for that.’
‘Too bad,’ Lizzie decreed. ‘They can look after themselves for once. Now, don’t you start arguing with me.’
She stood up and began bustling around the kitchen, gathering biscuits from several tins and piling them onto a plate. ‘See, there’s plenty of biscuits left. And Charlie must know how to make a pot of tea, for goodness sake! You’ll have time to get dinner on after you’ve had a little rest at my place.’
The thought of escaping briefly from Charlie’s house, with its constant reminders of his brooding presence, was cruelly tempting. ‘I can’t, Lizzie.’
‘Why not? What excuses are you going to drag out now?’
‘How can I go and ask Charlie when I’m in this state?’ Amy said. ‘He’ll want to know what’s wrong with me, and I couldn’t bear talking to him about it.’ Belatedly she recalled the promise he had extracted from her on their wedding night. And I’m not allowed to talk about Ann, anyway. He’d hit me if I told him.
‘Don’t tell him, then. You won’t be gone for long—just leave him a note or something.’
Amy shook her head. ‘I can’t do that. I’m not allowed to leave the farm without asking.’
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