Sentence of Marriage

by Shayne Parkinson

  ‘Humph! My pa would have had something to say to him if he had.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have been much comfort.’

  ‘Yes, it would. Anyway, who’d be scared of him—sour old man like that.’ Lizzie dismissed Charlie Stewart with a wave of her hand.

  A little beyond Mr Stewart’s property was the valley school, set on a pocket of land just big enough for the schoolhouse with its little yard and a small paddock for the horses. It was Saturday, and the school was deserted. Amy gazed at the small wooden building as they rode past, imagining herself working there again. Next year, Miss Evans had said. It did not sound so very long.

  There was only one more farm before the valley road met the main road into town. As they went past the Kelly property Amy noticed Lizzie become suddenly alert, straining her gaze up towards the homestead.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Lizzie, what’s wrong with you this morning? You’re being very secretive.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘Yes you are, and you’re being argumentative as well.’

  ‘Ooh, what a big word,’ Lizzie teased. ‘Well, all right, maybe I am. I just wondered if they’re both going down to the beach to have a look, and if they’ve left yet.’

  ‘Who—the Kellys, you mean?’

  Lizzie nodded.

  ‘What difference does it make whether it’s Frank or Ben or both of them?’

  ‘Well, Ben’s no use,’ said Lizzie. ‘He never even talks to anyone. Frank’s nice, though, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, of course he is.’ Frank was seven years older than Amy; she hadn’t gone to school with him, but saw him during haymaking and at church. He was quiet, but not as unfriendly as his older brother.

  ‘And they’ve got a good farm, and they live close.’

  ‘Yes,’ Amy agreed.

  ‘I just thought I’d like to get to know him a bit better.’

  ‘Why? Oh!’ Sudden realisation came. ‘You’re after him for a husband!’ Amy’s voice rose in amusement.

  ‘Shh!’ Lizzie hissed, looking around to see if anyone was listening. They were close to the beach now, and there were several other riders plus a few gigs and buggies about. ‘Now I didn’t say that, did I? I just said I wanted to get to know him a bit better.’

  ‘What’s the hurry?’

  ‘I’ve got to think ahead, you know—these things don’t just happen by themselves.’

  Amy smiled at Lizzie’s serious tone. ‘So are you going to walk up to him and ask him to marry you?’

  Lizzie pursed her lips. ‘I wish I’d left you at home if all you can say is silly things like that.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea to come, you know,’ Amy said, bristling a little.

  ‘I didn’t make you, did I?’

  ‘Yes, you did actually!’

  ‘Well, we’re here now. Let’s see if we can find him.’ Lizzie slid from her horse and tied the reins to a convenient tree branch. Amy jumped down and followed a few steps behind as Lizzie stalked off in her purposeful way.

  A cluster of about twenty people standing below the high-water mark showed where the beached whale lay. Amy glanced at the other onlookers as they drew closer; she saw old Mr Aitken and his son Matt, whose daughter Bessie had been one of Amy’s little pupils at school.

  ‘Look,’ Amy whispered to Lizzie, ‘some of those Feenan boys are here.’

  ‘Trust them. They wouldn’t miss an excuse to butt in where they’re not wanted.’

  ‘I hope they don’t start a fight,’ Amy said.

  The Feenans were a large Irish family that farmed a rough patch of land about two miles west of the valley where Amy lived. They were what Amy’s grandmother had always referred to as ‘a bit muddly’ about their household arrangements; no one was sure just how many of them lived there nor quite how they were related, but they were all Feenans and as far as their neighbours were concerned they all meant trouble. On this occasion they were represented by three boys whose ages appeared to range from about fourteen to eighteen. Amy was relieved the boys stood on the far side of the group, so that she and Lizzie would not have to pass close to them.

  The farmers stood around in small knots, chatting idly now that they had seen all they wanted of the whale. Amy caught snatches of conversation as Lizzie threaded her way through the group:

  ‘Weather’s bad, eh?’ ‘Yes, never seen so much mud—probably still be like this at calving time’ ‘Lord only knows what the maize’ll be like next summer’ ‘Butter price was pretty low this year’ ‘It’ll be worse next season, you mark my words’ ‘Hardly worth bothering’ ‘It’s the bloody government—that Colonial Treasurer Harry bloody Atkinson, he doesn’t care a damn about anywhere but bloody Taranaki’.

  Amy hid a smile and wondered, as she so often did, why they carried on if it was really as bad as all that.

  The curser, a farmer from closer to town whom Amy recognised as Mr Carr, was nudged in the ribs by his neighbour as the girls walked past. ‘It’s the Leith girls,’ one of the other men said. Mr Carr looked discomforted, though Amy heard him mutter under his breath something about this being ‘no place for women, anyway’. But they were greeted politely enough. ‘Morning, girls,’ the men said in chorus, touching their hats in greeting. Amy smiled and nodded, but Lizzie had seen her quarry and was oblivious.

  ‘Look, there he is—let’s go and talk to him,’ she said to Amy in a loud whisper. She walked up to Frank Kelly in what she seemed to think was a casual way.

  ‘Hello, Frank! I haven't seen you in such a long time—how are you?’

  Frank was a slightly-built youth, with light brown hair and an unfortunate tendency to blush when spoken to, especially by young ladies. He was wearing a battered felt hat that was surely older than he was. Amy, who had three men’s clothes to look after, noticed his shirt had a small tear in the sleeve that had been clumsily stitched up in a contrasting thread, and one of his cuffs had lost a button.

  ‘Oh, ah, hello Lizzie… and Amy… yes, thank you… how are you?’ He sounded rather confused. He probably remembered seeing Lizzie just the previous week at church, but she was giving the impression they had not met in some time.

  ‘What a huge fish!’ Lizzie said. Amy looked away from Frank to take proper notice of the animal for the first time. She had a feeling a whale wasn’t a fish, but it was never any use correcting Lizzie. ‘What do you think about it, Frank?’

  ‘It’s big,’ Frank agreed. He fell silent again, having exhausted his conversation for the moment.

  Amy stared at the whale. She wondered where it had come from, and how many years it had wandered the seas before ending up lying dead on Waituhi Beach. It was such a huge, powerful-looking creature; it made her think of the grey sea pounding against rocks in a storm. It seemed wrong to her that a being like that should come to such an end: being stared at by an uncaring group of land-bound farmers while half a dozen men sawed large hunks of flesh off it. Amy was surprised to feel tears coming to her eyes; the death of animals was something she accepted as a normal part of her life, but this creature of the sea was different.

  ‘Where are those Maoris from?’ Lizzie asked, pointing to the group of men stripping blubber from the whale with apparent expertise.

  ‘From down the coast—they still do a bit of whaling down there,’ Frank said. ‘They’re going to load as much of that fatty-looking stuff as they can into those longboats they came in and cart it home with them, then they boil it up in big iron pots on the beach and get the oil and things out of it.’

  ‘I didn’t know that! Fancy you knowing all about that sort of thing,’ said Lizzie. Frank blushed deeply at his own boldness, and said no more on the subject.

  There was a shout from one of the men working on the whale, and Amy saw the Feenan boys running away from the longboats, one of them clutching a slab of blubber.

  ‘Ooh, they must want to eat that stuff!’ Lizzie said. ‘Ugh, those mad Ir
ish’ll eat anything.’

  Something nagged at Amy’s memory as Lizzie spoke, but the thought refused to turn into anything clear. She saw the boys throw the blubber to one another, till one of them dropped the slippery lump. They wiped their hands on their sleeves and hooted with laughter, and Amy looked away.

  She heard a rasping whistle. ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ the oldest of the Feenans yelled. ‘Want to come home with me?’ The other two boys laughed raucously. Amy looked across in horror. ‘Yes, you with the dark hair,’ the boy called. ‘You look as though you’d be good for a bit of fun.’

  Amy wanted to sink into the ground. ‘Lizzie, can we go home?’

  ‘What a cheek!’ Lizzie put her hands on her hips and stared balefully at the Feenans. ‘Irish people have got no manners! Look, Pa’s going to sort them out.’

  Amy saw that Arthur was indeed bearing down on the guilty parties, waving his riding crop in a threatening manner. ‘Oh, no,’ she groaned. ‘There’s going to be a fight now. Can’t you stop him, Lizzie?’

  But there was no need for her to worry; the Feenan boys shrank before Arthur’s wrath. It only took a modest amount of shouting and arm-waving on her uncle’s part before the boys slunk away out of sight. Arthur called to Alf and walked towards the girls.

  ‘Right, Lizzie, we’re going now,’ her father said. ‘I can’t have you two being insulted by a lot of roughs like that.’

  ‘I suppose you were just leaving too, were you, Frank?’ Lizzie asked, and Frank was somehow gathered into her wake to walk beside her back to where the horses were tethered.

  ‘How’s Ben? And the farm? How do you two manage there by yourselves?’ Lizzie prattled on, not giving him time to answer. Amy felt rather sorry for him, though she was more amused than anything. Poor Frank didn’t know what danger he was in; he was lucky that Lizzie was too young to be allowed to marry for years yet. When they got to the trees Lizzie admired his horse, stroking its neck lovingly as if she had never seen a very ordinary-looking bay mare before, praised the tidy state of his harness, and generally made a fuss of Frank, something he was clearly quite unused to.

  ‘Leave young Frank alone, I want to get home,’ Arthur said, interrupting Lizzie in mid-sentence.

  Lizzie made a face in her father’s direction, though she was careful not to let him see it. ‘It’s been so nice talking to you.’ She beamed at Frank. ‘I hope I’ll see you again soon?’

  ‘Tomorrow at church, I expect.’ Frank seemed unsure whether to be flattered or frightened by Lizzie’s attentions, but Amy noticed he spent a long time fiddling with his horse’s harness; so long, in fact, that the Leiths had mounted and set off while Frank was still adjusting his stirrups, which seemed to need lengthening suddenly for some mysterious reason.

  After the trouble with the Feenans, Arthur was obviously feeling protective. He kept his horse to a walk and stayed close to the girls for the first part of the ride, until they were far enough up the valley road to be out of sight of the beach. Amy had to talk quietly to Lizzie so as not to be overheard.

  ‘Lizzie, you’re terrible!’

  ‘Why, what did I do wrong?’

  ‘You embarrassed Frank. And I thought you were shameless, throwing yourself at him like that.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Lizzie. ‘Some men need a bit of a push. Besides, he needs a woman—did you see that rip in his shirt?’

  ‘If he needs a woman that badly, you might miss out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he might decide he can’t wait years and years until you grow up, and he might find someone who’s old enough to get married now!’ Amy had the satisfaction of seeing a look of shock pass over her cousin’s face, then Lizzie turned on her.

  ‘You cheeky little…’ She put the reins in one hand and twisted around in the saddle to tug at Amy’s hair and tickle her mercilessly. Amy had to keep holding on to Lizzie to avoid falling, but she squealed and tried to wriggle out of her reach. The horse, disturbed by their noise and movement, snorted noisily and shied a little.

  ‘Hey, you girls, settle down back there—stop frightening that horse or I’ll lead her home and make you walk,’ Arthur said, looking back over his shoulder at them. They composed themselves hastily. A walk of two miles did not appeal.

  ‘Oh!’ Amy said when they passed Frank’s farm. The thought that had nagged at her earlier had suddenly gelled. ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have been so rude about the Feenans, either.’

  ‘Me, rude! I like that—after the way they carried on! What do you mean, rude?’

  ‘Not so much what you said about Feenans, but the way you went on about the Irish.’

  ‘It’s all true, isn’t it? Pa says they’re bog Irish, and that’s why they fight and cause trouble all the time, and why their farm’s so rubbishy.’

  ‘That’s what I mean—where do you think the name “Kelly” comes from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lizzie said with a shrug. ‘Oh! Do you think it’s an Irish name?’

  ‘I'm sure it is. I remember Granny saying that.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lizzie was silent for a moment. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, cheerful again. ‘Frank was born here, so he’s not Irish, even if his father was. I’m sure the Kellys aren’t bog Irish, anyway.’ As Amy had no idea what ‘bog Irish’ might mean, she was unable to argue with this.

  ‘I’m staying here till lunch-time,’ Lizzie said to her father when they reached Amy’s gate.

  ‘Did you ask your ma?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all right with Ma,’ Lizzie said airily. She turned her horse’s head towards Amy’s house. ‘Ma wouldn’t remember even if I had,’ she murmured.

  ‘You shake that dress out before you come in my kitchen—you’ve got sand and horsehair all over it,’ Amy admonished when they reached the house. ‘You can take those dirty boots off, too.’

  ‘Bossy.’ But Lizzie did give her dress a good shake, making quite a cloud of sand and dust, and left her boots at the door.

  Lizzie had not worn a pinafore on the outing; when Amy asked if it had been because she wanted to look more grown-up in front of Frank, Lizzie cheerfully admitted that was the case. She followed Amy into her bedroom and with some difficulty squeezed into one of her pinafores.

  ‘It’s a bit tight over the chest, but no one’s going to see me in it. You’ll need a new one when you get a bosom,’ Lizzie said, all buxom superiority. She straightened Amy’s armband. ‘How long are you going to wear this?’

  ‘A year, it’s meant to be. Pa said I didn’t need to—he thinks I’m too young to bother with it. But I want to do the right thing.’

  ‘You always want to do the right thing, don’t you? You try a bit too hard sometimes, you know.’

  ‘That’s my look-out.’

  Lizzie plumped herself down on the bed and patted a place at her side. ‘How are you getting on now?’ she asked when Amy sat down. ‘Still missing your granny?’

  Amy nodded. ‘It was awful to see her in pain and everything—she didn’t even know who I was at the end. But it’s strange without her. Granny’s always been here.’

  ‘It’s a blessed release, Ma says.’

  ‘Everyone says that. I still miss her, though.’

  Lizzie gave her a hug. ‘You’ve got bits of leaf in your hair, I think they came off that tree I tied Jessie to. Here, let me.’ She picked out a few dried fragments, then stroked the long black curls. ‘Your hair is so pretty,’ she said, without a trace of envy. ‘Ma always says she wishes my hair was wavy like yours.’ Lizzie’s fair hair, although thick and healthy, was obstinately straight, defying all her mother’s attempts at curling it in rags.

  ‘But yours is blonde.’

  ‘That just means I get freckles if I leave my bonnet off for five minutes. Your skin always seems to stay creamy. Ma says you’re like a little doll, with your great big blue eyes and all that hair.’

  Amy pulled a face at her; ‘Little doll’ was too much. ‘Just because I’m small, everyone treats me a
s though I’m a baby.’

  Lizzie stood up. ‘We’d better get on with things. What needs doing first?’

  Amy’s grandmother had kept to a strict routine; ‘Every task has its time and season,’ she had been fond of saying; but during her months of juggling her time between the school and home, Amy had learned to be more flexible, fitting tasks in whenever she had a moment. Today the work went quickly, with two of them to share it.

  When the cleaning was done, they scrubbed their hands and settled down to a serious bout of baking. Lizzie hummed to herself as she broke eggs into a bowl.

  Amy smiled at her. ‘You’re very pleased with yourself today, aren’t you?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Lizzie looked smug. ‘I think things are going to work out nicely.’ Amy knew she didn’t mean the biscuits she was making.

  ‘So you’re really set on catching Frank?’

  ‘I’m just planning ahead, that’s all,’ Lizzie said, stirring her mixture vigorously. ‘What's wrong with that?’

  ‘Frank’s nice, but he’s not very… well, exciting, is he?’

  Lizzie stopped her work. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with him. It’s not so much Frank, it’s.… well, he’s just the same as everyone else around here. I mean, if you married him you’d move down the road a couple of miles. Apart from that everything would be the same. Why do you want to bother?’

  ‘There’d be a few more differences than that. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Lizzie! You don’t know any more about it than I do!’

  ‘Any more about what?’

  ‘You know what—stop it!’ Amy was annoyed to feel herself blushing.

  ‘I was just talking about running my own house. I don’t know what you were talking about, I’m sure. Of course, when I was your age I wasn’t very interested in getting married either,’ Lizzie said, dropping spoonfuls of biscuit dough onto a tray. ‘You’re only twelve, after all. You’ll have to grow up a bit more before you start being interested.’

  ‘I’m nearly thirteen.’

  ‘Well, I’m nearly fifteen then.’