Sentence of Marriage

by Shayne Parkinson

  ‘We’re lucky there’s things to help nowadays,’ Marion agreed. ‘Things are much easier for women now.’

  Thomas started to cry, and Susannah opened her bodice and put him to her breast. ‘I’ll be glad when this part’s over and he can eat solid food. When will that be, Edie?’

  ‘Well, you can start giving him a bit of milky gruel when he’s five or six months old, but you’ll want to keep feeding him yourself for a year.’

  ‘A whole year! Oh, no, I can’t put up with that,’ Susannah said firmly.

  ‘I always feed mine for at least a year,’ Rachel said in her shy way. ‘I think it’s better for them—and it’s certainly better for me.’

  ‘I fed Bobby for a year and a half,’ Marion chimed in. ‘It’s no bother, really.’

  ‘Ugh! It’s so… well, undignified. It’ll ruin my figure, too, a child dragging at me like this.’

  ‘There’s one thing that’d ruin your figure faster than that, Susannah—that’s having a child every year. Best way of spreading them out is to keep on feeding him yourself as long as you can.’ Edie sounded very certain.

  ‘Really?’ Susannah looked more interested. ‘Is that how it works?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You hardly ever hear of a woman getting with child while she’s still feeding the last one.’

  ‘That’s how I’ve put off having another one this long,’ said Marion.

  ‘It’s how I’ve got two years between all mine, too,’ Rachel added.

  ‘Oh. Well, I suppose I can put up with it, then.’

  ‘Of course you can slow them down a bit by fiddling about with calendars and dates,’ Edie said vaguely. ‘It’s no good young women like you trying that, though. Wait until you’ve been married a few more years, Susannah, and I’ll tell you about that.’

  Edie leaned towards the other women and spoke more quietly. ‘I had a bit of a fright myself last month,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone. ‘The bleeding was a couple of weeks late—I’m never sure exactly when it’s coming, I always forget to make a note of the date when I get it, but I know it was late. It gave me quite a turn, I can tell you—another baby at my age.’

  Lizzie’s eyes opened wide at her mother’s words, and she turned to Amy with a horrified expression. ‘Oh, no!’ she mouthed silently.

  ‘I’d be nearly forty when it was born. Of course, I wouldn’t mind too much myself.’ She smiled fondly at little Thomas, who was still sucking greedily. ‘Arthur would’ve gone crook, though—he reckoned he was a bit past putting up with babies when Ernie came along. Not that he isn’t sweet with the little fellow most of the time.’

  ‘You’re not, are you?’ Susannah asked, looking rather disapproving.

  ‘No,’ Edie said, and it was hard to tell if she were more relieved or disappointed. ‘The bleeding turned up in the end. No, I think it meant the opposite, really—I’m about finished with having babies, and I won’t be getting the bleeding much longer.’ Lizzie gave an exaggerated, though silent, sigh of relief.

  ‘I’ve got another child coming,’ Rachel said shyly. ‘I think I’m going to have a big family—I’m only twenty-four now.’

  ‘You must have married very young,’ Susannah said, turning to her with a slight frown.

  ‘Yes, I was only seventeen. That’s too young, really, I think eighteen’s soon enough. Matt was older, he was twenty-five, so at least one of us was grown up.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I don’t think he’ll let our girls get married before they’re eighteen.’

  Lizzie pulled a face. ‘That’s just what Ma needs to hear, I don’t think,’ she whispered to Amy.

  ‘She’ll have forgotten by the time she gets home,’ Amy whispered back.

  *

  For a time Susannah appeared to enjoy the status a new baby gave her among other women, but the novelty of the baby soon seemed to wear off. Amy found there were unpleasant tasks involved in caring for a child, and as nasty smells and messes upset city-bred Susannah far more than they did Amy, the girl took on much of the napkin-washing and cleaning up of vomit that Thomas generated. Susannah seemed to be tired most of the time; even when Thomas started sleeping through the night, when he was four months old, he still woke much earlier in the morning than his mother would have chosen. Amy now always brought Susannah a cup of tea when Jack had got up, and she got into the habit of taking the baby out to the kitchen with her after Susannah had given him his first feed of the day so that her stepmother could doze for an extra half hour. Thomas seemed content to gurgle to himself in the nest of blankets Amy made for him in a warm corner of the kitchen until his mother emerged to take charge of him again.

  Susannah’s mother had sent parcels of beautifully embroidered baby gowns, more ornamental than useful, when Susannah had written to let her parents know they had a new grandchild. One day in early December, while Amy was holding Thomas and Susannah was having her morning tea, Jack brought home another parcel. Susannah was at first delighted over the delicate lacy shawl that emerged, but when she read the letter that had been tucked into the shawl she made a sound of dismay.

  ‘Oh no! It’s not fair!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Jack asked. ‘Not bad news from your mother?’

  ‘Yes… no… oh, it’s just not fair. Constance and Henry have got a new house—in Judges Bay!’

  ‘Is that bad?’ Amy asked.

  ‘It’s just the nicest part of Auckland, that’s all,’ Susannah said, obviously close to tears. ‘My sister living in Judges Bay, and I’m in this dump.’ Thomas stirred in Amy’s arms and began to cry, and Susannah snatched him up to carry him off to the bedroom, where she could feed him in privacy. ‘I’m turning into an old frump, stuck out here with this little parasite draining my strength and ruining my figure,’ she flung over her shoulder as she stalked out of the kitchen. Amy and Jack looked at each other, then went about their work. An unspoken agreement had evolved between them not to discuss Susannah’s more unreasonable outbursts.

  *

  Even Susannah now considered the elaborate dresses she had brought from Auckland too fussy for the country during the height of summer, and she had taken to wearing plainer cotton ones around the house. She found the hot, dusty trip into town too much to bear more than once a week, and on particularly humid Sundays she even felt unable to go to church. Throughout January Amy thought Susannah seemed worried about something, but she knew better than to pry. One February morning when Amy went into Susannah’s room to bring her cup of tea and take Thomas away, she found Susannah standing in her nightdress in front of her open wardrobe, stroking her dresses and looking at them with an expression that was almost hungry.

  Amy put the cup on Susannah’s bedside table and went over to stand beside her. ‘Those dresses are really beautiful,’ she said softly. ‘It’ll be nice to see you wearing them again this winter.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Susannah said. There was a catch in her voice that puzzled Amy, but Susannah’s feelings were so often a mystery that she thought little of it. ‘They’re all I’ve got left.’

  ‘You could get some more.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. They’re all that’s left from how I used to be, before I got like this.’ There was a silence between them, then Susannah got back into bed and picked up her teacup.

  Amy picked Thomas up and carried him from the room. She was not sure why Susannah seemed so desperately unhappy, but she thought perhaps she understood just a little of her stepmother’s longing for the life she had led in Auckland.

  Amy was playing with Thomas, who was just learning to push himself up on his hands to look around, in the kitchen after breakfast when Susannah came out. ‘Look after him for me, I’m going out for a little while,’ she said.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Amy asked in surprise, but Susannah went to the porch and put her boots on without a word, then closed the door firmly behind her.

  ‘Where’s your ma?’ Jack asked when he came in for morning tea. He took his little son onto his lap. ‘Not still
in bed, is she?’

  ‘No, she got up quite early and went out—I don’t know where she’s gone, she didn’t say,’ said Amy.

  Jack sighed. ‘I wonder what’s got into her now—she’s not usually much of a one for taking walks, especially in this heat. Oh well, the fresh air might do her some good—she’s inclined to spend too much time inside moping.’ He sniffed. ‘The air’s not too sweet in here, what’s that?’ He felt gingerly at Thomas’ napkin. ‘Hmm, I think this little fellow needs cleaning up.’

  ‘I’ll change him, Pa.’ Amy scooped up the baby and took him to Jack and Susannah’s room. When he had a clean napkin on she thought he looked sleepy, so she laid him down in his cradle and crept out of the room, closing the door softly.

  She was almost back at the kitchen when she heard the outside door open and close. Amy could tell from the tread that it was Susannah, and she stopped in the passage near the open door, unsure whether to go into the kitchen or not.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she heard her father ask. ‘Amy said you rushed off somewhere and wouldn’t tell her where you were going.’

  I didn’t say it like that, Amy thought in mild irritation.

  ‘I don’t have to ask that child’s permission to step outside the door, do I?’ Susannah sounded barely in control, and Amy’s heart sank.

  ‘Of course you don’t, we just wondered where you were—have you been crying, Susannah?’ Amy heard her father’s step as he crossed the floor.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Susannah flung at him, but she went on more quietly. ‘I’ve been to see Edie to ask her about what’s happening to me. Things didn’t seem right, not like how she said they’d be. And they’re not right. All that talk about how it couldn’t happen while I had all the unpleasantness of feeding him myself—it wasn’t true.’ She fell silent for a few moments. ‘I’m with child again.’

  ‘That’s nothing to be upset about!’ Jack said, delight in his voice.

  ‘Yes, trust you to think that,’ Susannah said bitterly. ‘Just like one of your cows, regular as clockwork every August. Well, I’m not one of your cows, and I don’t want to be treated like one. I’m not going to put up with it, do you hear?’

  ‘Now, Susannah, there’s no need to talk like that. It’s a bit sooner than you thought, but that just means the little ones will be good playmates for each other. You would’ve had another one soon enough, anyway—what difference does it make whether there’s one year between them or two?’

  ‘Take your hands off me!’ Susannah screamed. She rushed from the room, too abruptly for Amy to make a dash for her own bedroom.

  Susannah came face to face with her and stopped in her tracks. ‘Listening at keyholes, were you?’ she said, her voice raw with suppressed weeping, then she pushed past Amy and disappeared into her bedroom. She slammed the door after her, and Amy heard Thomas start crying, but the baby’s wails were soon drowned by his mother’s.

  12

  February – December 1883

  It seemed to Amy that the remaining months of Susannah’s second pregnancy were like living the previous year all over again. With this baby being due just a year after Thomas’s birth, Susannah was at the same stage each month as she had been exactly twelve months beforehand.

  There were differences, though. This time Susannah went into her sack-like dresses and stopped leaving the house in her fifth month with only minor complaints. And of course this year Thomas was there. Susannah weaned him at six months; when she announced this to Edie, the older woman sighed and agreed.

  ‘Yes, you’ve got to, really. It’s a bit early for the little fellow, but you’ll need all your strength for the new baby.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ said Susannah. ‘I’d be giving up that unpleasantness anyway, even if I did have the strength to do both. I don’t see why I should put up with it if it’s not going to do me any good.’

  Thomas continued to grow and thrive, even without his mother’s grudged milk, and Amy enjoyed playing with him as he became more responsive.

  ‘Makes me feel young again, having a baby around the place,’ Jack would say as he bounced the child on his knee.

  ‘It makes me feel old,’ was Susannah’s muttered reply.

  There was something different about Susannah this year, Amy thought. She still had tantrums and fits of weeping, but far fewer than when she was carrying Thomas. As her pregnancy wore on, Susannah was more and more inclined to wear an expression of grim determination, as though screwing up her courage to make a difficult decision. Amy decided Susannah was probably frightened again about the birth, even though Aunt Edie had said her stepmother wouldn’t be nervous after she had had one baby.

  Amy was confirmed in May that year, when the Bishop made his annual visit to Ruatane. Lizzie had delayed her own confirmation so that the cousins could be confirmed together, which meant Lizzie was the oldest of the ten candidates. Two weeks before confirmation Mrs Leveston, the wife of Ruatane’s Resident Magistrate and the self-appointed arbiter of style for the town, invited the girls of the confirmation class to her house for a Thursday afternoon tea.

  ‘She thinks she’s giving us wild colonial girls a taste of civilisation,’ Lizzie said, with more truth than she knew. But both girls enjoyed the prospect of an outing and seeing the inside of what was probably the most elegant house in Ruatane.

  Arthur dropped the girls off at the Leveston’s house in good time on the appointed day. ‘I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours when I’ve finished in town. Watch yourselves, don’t disgrace the family,’ he said as he drove off.

  ‘As if we would,’ said Lizzie. She led the way up the drive with a determined stride.

  The house was not large, no bigger than Amy’s home, but the garden had a manicured perfection that betrayed the fact that Mr Leveston employed two gardeners. Dotted about the lawn were rose beds, unfortunately without roses at this time of year, but filled with marigolds and violas to give colour. Other beds were planted in lavender, which gave off a sweet scent as the girls walked past, or in tall larkspurs and mignonette with lobelias and alyssum around the edges. A huge lilac tree had pride of place in the centre of the lawn, with several rhododendrons and camellias around it. The gravel drive ran around the edge of the garden, right up to the front door, with a border of petunias all along its length.

  When Lizzie rapped on the door it was opened by a maid wearing a dark dress and a white cap and apron. Both girls stared at her, never having seen such a thing as a uniformed servant before. ‘Come through to the drawing room, ladies,’ the maid said, and Amy very nearly looked around to see where the ‘ladies’ were. But she collected herself, and with Lizzie followed the maid a short way down a wide passage then into a room that overlooked the beautiful front garden.

  ‘You’re the first ones to arrive,’ the maid said. ‘I’ll tell the mistress you’re here,’ she added as she left the room.

  ‘I told Pa he was bringing us too early—he never takes any notice of me,’ Lizzie grumbled, but Amy hardly heard her. The room was taking her whole attention.

  ‘Did you ever see such a place,’ Amy said in a voice little above a whisper. ‘It’s just so elegant. Look at these things.’ She walked over to the fireplace with its marble surrounds, and looked at herself in the ornate gold-framed mirror that hung above the mantel. An elaborate clock with the figures of young women either side of it and a glass dome over the whole, was in the centre of the mantelpiece, with a heavy silver candlestick on either side. Silver-framed photographs and several porcelain vases shared the rest of the mantelpiece.

  Amy turned from the fireplace and looked around the rest of the room, exclaiming over the delicate china figures that sat on a small table around a vase decorated with painted flowers and gold leaf, then studying a painting of a young woman who bore an expression of rapture as she rose from a man’s lap. ‘Isn’t that gorgeous?’ she said at the sight of a magnificent candelabra that hung from the ceiling.

  ‘Mmm,�
� Lizzie said dubiously. ‘It looks nice, but what an awful thing to dust.’

  ‘Don’t be so practical, Lizzie,’ Amy scolded. ‘Oh, look at this beautiful piano!’ She rushed over to the Brinsmead that dominated one corner of the room and ran her fingers lightly over the polished wood. ‘Wouldn’t you just love to have beautiful things like these?’ she asked, turning a glowing face towards her cousin.

  ‘What’s the point in hankering after things you’re never going to get?’ Lizzie said, in a down-to-earth way Amy found maddening. ‘It only vexes you. Let’s face it, Amy, we’re not from the sort of family that has pianos.’

  ‘There’s no harm in dreaming, is there?’ The piano drew Amy to it. She raised the lid and laid her fingers very gently on the exposed ivory keys, too softly to make a sound.

  ‘It’s a lovely instrument, we brought it out from Home,’ came an English-accented voice from close behind her. Amy quickly put the piano lid down, took a step backwards and turned guiltily. Mrs Leveston had entered the room without the girls noticing; despite her plumpness she could move very quietly. ‘Do you play, my dear?’

  ‘Ah, no, I don’t,’ Amy said, feeling her face reddening. ‘I’ve never learned.’

  ‘Oh, you should,’ Mrs Leveston said. Her elegant voice and dumpy figure seemed oddly mismatched. ‘Look at those lovely graceful fingers of yours, I’m sure you must be musical.’ She took Amy’s unresisting hand in her own, and turned it over to expose the palm. Amy felt the cream lace at the cuffs of Mrs Leveston’s lilac silk dress brush against her wrist. ‘But look at the state of it,’ the woman exclaimed, seeing Amy’s rough, broken skin. She took the other hand as well and put the guilty palms side by side. ‘You’re not looking after your skin properly, my dear. These hands of yours are spending too much time in water.’