Sentence of Marriage

by Shayne Parkinson

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Jack. ‘Feenans?’

  Harry grinned. ‘You guessed it.’

  ‘Who are the Feenans?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘A mad Irish lot—they live down by Orere Beach,’ Jack explained. ‘Whenever there’s trouble, you can be pretty sure the Feenans won’t be far away.’

  ‘Really, this is such a rough place,’ Susannah said, pursing her lips, but the others ignored her.

  ‘What about the man who got stabbed?’ Amy persisted. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Bill said they got the doctor to him—he was pretty bad, but people were saying he’d most likely get over it.’ Harry looked a little disappointed, but then he brightened. ‘There’s a bunch of them in the lock-up now—the other ones from Tauranga and a few Feenans. They’ll all be up before Leveston next week. If that fellow dies, Gerry Feenan’ll hang! He’s the one that had the knife.’

  ‘Oh,’ Susannah said, slumping back in her chair. ‘Oh, I don’t feel very well.’

  ‘Course, they all probably had knives, but Gerry Feenan’s one had blood on it,’ Harry went on with relish. Susannah gave a groan.

  ‘That’s enough about it,’ said Jack. ‘You’re upsetting Susannah. Haven’t you got any work to do, boy?’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Harry grumbled, casting a dark look at Susannah. ‘I’ll go and give John a hand getting the cows in.’

  ‘I’ll come with you—I’ve spent enough time sitting around doing nothing,’ Jimmy said. ‘I can’t let you do all the work, Harry.’ He and Harry strolled off together out of sight around the corner of the house.

  ‘Well, at least that’ll be a few less Feenans around for a while,’ Jack said. ‘Ruatane should be a bit quieter.’

  ‘I think there’s still plenty more of them, Pa,’ said Amy. ‘There seem to be so many Feenans.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ Jack said.

  Amy looked at Susannah, trying to gauge her mood. She seemed calm, and Jimmy had spent most of the afternoon with her, so she was probably in as good a mood as Amy was ever likely to find her. ‘Susa—Ma,’ Amy corrected herself, aware of Jack’s watchful presence, ‘the hay dance is next month—it’s only about four weeks away now.’

  ‘I know,’ said Susannah. ‘It seems to be the only dance you ever have around here, and I can’t go to it.’ She looked resentfully at Jack, but he smiled back at her.

  ‘Now, Susannah, we talked about that. No one takes babies to the dance.’

  ‘Why can’t she look after the boys for me?’ Susannah waved her hand towards Amy.

  Amy felt a stab of alarm. ‘Pa, you did say I could go this year.’ She winced under the look Susannah turned on her. ‘But I’ll stay home and look after the babies if you say I have to.’ She saw her longed-for outing with Jimmy evaporate as she spoke.

  ‘Yes, I said you could go—and I meant it, too. Susannah, it’s the girl’s first dance—you don’t want to take that off her, do you? Anyway,’ he went on, not giving Susannah time to answer, ‘the dance is for the young ones, really—us old folk should stay home and let them get on with having a good time.’ He laughed at his own humour, but Susannah looked less than amused.

  ‘I’m only twenty-seven. I don’t think that’s old.’

  Jack smiled at her. ‘No, of course you’re not. You’re still a young thing—you’ll keep me young, too, you and the little fellows. But you couldn’t leave Georgie all that time—what if he needed a feed?’

  ‘I’m going to wean that child,’ Susannah muttered. ‘He’s taken my strength for long enough.’ She cast a defiant look at Jack. ‘I’m going to that dance next year.’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’ Jack put his hand over hers, but she pulled her hand away. ‘Unless you’ve got a new baby by then.’

  ‘I won’t have a baby—I told you I’m not going to have babies every year.’ Susannah glared at him, and Amy tried to make herself inconspicuous.

  ‘Hey, Susannah, no need to talk about that sort of thing in front of the girl.’

  ‘Humph! She’s heard it all before—she listens at keyholes to find things out.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Amy began, then gave up the attempt to defend herself. She wondered why Susannah had told Edie she wasn’t going to have any more babies ever, while Amy’s father only seemed to have been told that she wasn’t going to have another one this year, but it was none of her business.

  Well, the conversation had got off to a bad start, but she could hardly make it worse. She ploughed on. ‘About the dance—could I have a new dress for it?’

  ‘All right,’ Susannah said, indifference in her voice. ‘You must be due for a new smart dress.’

  So far, so good. The next part would be harder. ‘I’m fifteen now, I don’t think I’m going to grow much more. Do you think…’ she gathered her courage. ‘Do you think I could have a silk dress this year?’ she said in a rush.

  Susannah looked at her doubtfully. ‘I don’t know, you’re a little young for silk, really—’

  ‘Oh, go on, Susannah,’ Jack broke in. ‘Let the girl have a silk dress if her heart’s that set on it. It’s her first dance, you know.’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ Susannah snapped. ‘Well, if you want to waste the money it’s up to you.’

  *

  The next week saw haymaking start on Jack’s farm, and because Charlie Stewart’s farm was so small his solitary hay paddock was mown at the same time. Amy took morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea to the workers, which meant she got to see Jimmy often during the day, but they had no chance to be alone. The obvious route for the short distance from Jack’s hay paddocks to the house lay across cleared ground, so there were no quiet walks home together. Instead Amy trudged to and from the haymaking by herself, and Jimmy came up with her brothers at the end of the day.

  That Thursday Jack took Amy into town with Susannah and the two little boys, leaving John, Harry and Jimmy to turn the hay. Thomas was entrusted to Jack, and Susannah led the way into the draper’s shop. Mrs Nichol ushered Susannah to a tall stool in front of the counter, and lifted down bolts of fabric for their inspection. Amy stood by the rolls of silk, gazing at the beautiful fabric in delight.

  ‘Your first silk dress, dear,’ Mrs Nichol gushed. ‘What do you think you’d like?’

  Amy tore her eyes away from the silk with difficulty. ‘Oh… I suppose I have to choose one, don’t I?’ She looked back at the fabric. ‘There’re such a lot of them. Well… what about this one?’ She pointed to a plain silk in pale pink. She usually seemed to have pink dresses, so it was probably a safe choice.

  ‘No,’ Susannah said decisively. ‘You’re not having that—it wouldn’t do a thing for you. No, I think this one.’ She indicated a bolt of blue silk. When Mrs Nichol unrolled it on the counter, Amy saw that the light seemed to play across the silk in waves, sometimes paler and sometimes darker. It reminded her of sunshine on the sea. Amy thought she had never seen a more beautiful fabric.

  Mrs Nichol held it up against Amy. ‘Oh, yes, with your colouring this will look beautiful. You certainly have good taste, Mrs Leith. Now, dear,’ she smiled at Amy, ‘how much do you think you’ll need? What sort of dress are you going to make?’

  ‘She’s not making it,’ Susannah interrupted, and Amy turned to her in bewilderment. Was Susannah going to take the dress away from her after all?

  ‘But Susannah, I thought you said I could have it.’

  Susannah silenced her with a wave of her hand. ‘If your father’s to spend all this money on a silk dress for a child, it’s up to me to see it’s not completely wasted. I’m not going to have you spoil this material. Mrs Nichol, I want you to make a dress for Amy.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Leith, it’ll be a pleasure.’ Mrs Nichol took out her tape measure and noted down a bemused Amy’s measurements. ‘You’ll look beautiful in this,’ she said effusively. ‘She’s such a pretty girl,’ she said to Susannah.

  ‘She’s very small,’ said Susannah.

  ‘She’s dainty. What style di
d you have in mind, dear?’ Mrs Nichol asked, turning back to Amy.

  ‘I thought I’d make it plain, maybe with a frill at the bottom?’

  ‘That wouldn’t do justice to the fabric,’ Susannah broke in. ‘Mrs Nichol, I want it narrow in the bodice, then flaring out over the hips and very full around the hem. Loop the upper part over her hips, then the rest will look like an underskirt, except in the same material. Narrow sleeves, too, with a frill around the cuffs—this lace is rather nice.’ She picked up some wide ivory lace from the counter. ‘What do you think of this for the cuffs?’ She was talking to the dressmaker rather than to Amy.

  ‘Very pretty,’ Mrs Nichol agreed. ‘Now, around the hem a pleated organdie frill would be nice. I could attach this lace to it—see, it goes nicely with the wide lace for the cuffs.’

  They were ignoring her, but Amy broke in timidly. ‘Wouldn’t that lace around the hem be a bit hard to wash?’

  ‘I’ll attach the frill so you can easily take it off for washing, then sew it on again,’ Mrs Nichol explained.

  ‘Yes, the organdie frill is just right,’ Susannah agreed. She pursed her lips. ‘I suppose this is rather foolish, having such an elaborate dress made for a girl her age.’

  ‘The style is perhaps a little old for her—but if I put on a good, deep hem she can lower it when she goes into adult clothes. She should get several years of wear out of it that way.’

  ‘Hmm. That seems sensible enough.’ Susannah stood up. ‘Is that all you need to know? When can I collect the dress?’

  ‘I should have it ready in two weeks. Bring her in for a fitting next week, I’ll have it cut out and pinned by then.’ It would be finished in plenty of time for the dance, Amy was relieved to realise.

  ‘Susannah,’ Amy said when they were walking back to meet her father. ‘About my dress…’

  ‘What are you nagging about now? You’re not having anything else—that dress is going to cost quite enough money.’

  ‘No, I just wanted… I just wanted to say thank you. I mean, about saying I could have the dress made and everything. It’s going to be beautiful, and you picked such nice material and lace and things—’

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ said Susannah. ‘You had no idea what you wanted—you’re too young to have any idea of style, anyway. I didn’t want to see you looking ridiculous, that’s all.’ But Amy could see that Susannah was gratified by her praise.

  *

  The following day the hay was ready to be stacked, and again the men of the valley gathered for the laborious work. Amy had to make piles of sandwiches and pies, along with cakes, scones and tarts, to feed them all. It was difficult for her to carry four baskets full of food and drink, and she was grateful that the hay paddocks were so close to the farmhouse.

  When Amy was gathering up the plates and mugs from lunch, her father ambled over in her direction. ‘We’ll be finishing up this paddock in a couple of hours, then we’ll go over and stack Charlie’s bit of hay,’ he said. ‘So you’d better bring the afternoon tea over there.’

  ‘All right, Pa.’ Although she knew it was irrational, Amy felt a reluctance to go on to Charlie Stewart’s farm. She said nothing of it to her father. Lizzie was right: Charlie was just a grumpy old man, and there was no reason to be frightened of him.

  But when she carried down the afternoon tea things Amy felt annoyance rather than fear. It really was a long way to struggle with her heavy baskets, and every time she climbed a fence it meant putting them down, scrambling over, then hauling the baskets after her.

  She was hot and flustered by the time she reached the hay paddock where the men had just started building a small stack, but she felt better when Jimmy greeted her with a warm smile. He was the first to reach her, and Amy knew it was not just eagerness for the food.

  ‘You look worn out, sweetheart,’ he said, too quietly for the other men to hear as they approached. ‘You sit down and I’ll set these things out.’

  ‘No, you mustn’t—it’s my job. Anyway, they’ll all laugh if they see you doing that,’ Amy protested. But Jimmy insisted on helping her, and to her surprise Frank helped too when he came up to them.

  Charlie took his food in silence and went a short distance away from the others. When Jack walked over to Amy she saw him frown at his neighbour. ‘Bad tempered so-and-so,’ Jack muttered as he loaded his plate. ‘Amy, when you go home again you’d better go around by the road.’

  Amy’s heart sank. ‘But that’s quite a bit further, Pa, especially with all these baskets. Why do I have to do that?’

  ‘Because Charlie says he doesn’t want you wandering around his farm—he says you’ll frighten the cows in that paddock by the fence because they’re not used to skirts.’ He scowled in Charlie’s direction. ‘Load of rubbish, but it’s his farm so he can say who comes and goes on it. Flaming cheek—I notice he’s happy enough to eat the stuff you brought.’ Charlie was, indeed, tucking greedily into a slice of mutton pie.

  ‘Oh. All right.’ Amy resigned herself to the unpleasant trek. She glanced at Jimmy, and was startled to see anger on his face, but he spoke very calmly.

  ‘I think that’s a bit far for Amy to carry all these things. There’s not that much hay to pick up here, how about I take them for her? It won’t take me long to get there and back.’

  ‘That’s a kind thought. Yes, you take the girl home—there’s no need for you to come back afterwards, but you can start getting the cows in if you want.’

  So when they had all finished eating, Jimmy gathered up Amy’s baskets and they set off down the road.

  ‘That was nice of you, Jimmy,’ Amy said as soon as they were out of earshot.

  ‘I can’t have my little sweetheart wearing herself out like that, can I? I wish I’d thought about you bringing all this down in the first place—I should have carried it for you then.’ Jimmy glanced over his shoulder. ‘No chance of a kiss, I’m afraid—we’re still well in sight of the workers.’

  ‘It’s nice just to be with you,’ Amy said. ‘You must be getting sick of the sight of hay by now. Stacking’s hard work, isn’t it?’

  Jimmy grinned at her. ‘Not as hard as entertaining Susannah. Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t say that—I wouldn’t have come down here if it wasn’t for her, then I never would have met you. It’s no harder than trying to keep Mother happy.’

  Amy felt a burst of gratitude towards her stepmother. Susannah might be difficult, but she had brought Jimmy to the farm, and that covered a multitude of faults.

  ‘What’s your other sister like?’ she asked.

  ‘Constance? I suppose she’s a lot like Susannah, really. She’s two years younger than her—five years older than me. They both used to boss me around when we were all young—it should be against the law for a boy to have older sisters!’ He laughed at the thought.

  ‘Constance is prettier than Susannah, though. Not that that makes her a beauty—nothing like you—but she’s always been rather fond of herself. She was a bit of a flirt when she was a girl, Mother was quite relieved when Henry proposed to her. Constance got married when she was nineteen, just after Henry qualified as a lawyer.’

  ‘What did Susannah think of that?’

  ‘Just what you’d expect. Constance didn’t help by going on and on about how nice it was to be getting married before she was in her twenties. And there was Susannah, twenty-one and never been asked. She didn’t mind so much when Henry was still struggling and Constance had to make do with two or three dresses, but when he started to get on… well, you can imagine.’

  ‘Yes, I think I can. Poor Susannah.’

  Jimmy warmed to his subject. ‘Then you should have heard Constance when Susannah told her she was getting married—“Oh, darling, how wonderful. At your age, too—you’re so lucky to have found a mature man”. Susannah was so proud of herself, and all Constance could do was be patronising. Of course when Susannah was out of earshot Constance didn’t call him mature—he was Susannah’s old farmer. “At least the poor dear sh
ouldn’t have to put up with him for too many years, he’s so old”—’

  Jimmy stopped abruptly and looked at Amy. She felt her face burning. ‘Amy, I am an insensitive idiot and I deserve to be kicked, repeating that about your father. I’m sorry—can you forgive me?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Amy said when she could trust herself to speak. It’s not as if you said it yourself. And Pa is an awful lot older than Susannah.’

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation, I think your father’s the fittest man for his age I’ve ever met. He’ll probably live to be ninety.’

  Amy was thoughtful for some time. ‘I’m glad you told me that, Jimmy,’ she said when they had turned off the valley road and were back on Jack’s farm. ‘It sort of helps me understand Susannah a bit better—why she gets difficult sometimes.’

  ‘She certainly gives you a hard time, doesn’t she? Sometimes when she snaps at you I feel like snapping back at her, but of course I can’t say a word. We don’t want her getting suspicious.’

  ‘Oh, Susannah hasn’t been difficult since you came—not like she was before, anyway. She used to go really strange, especially when the babies were coming. She’d cry all the time, then she’d yell and scream, at me mostly—she threw a plate at me once. And one time she even made Pa…’ she stopped, unwilling to relive that particular memory.

  Jimmy looked at her in astonishment. ‘Really? I didn’t know she was in that bad a state. She used to be quite a lively sort of person—your father was taken with her as soon as he arrived at our place. Of course she was making an effort to impress him—it worked, too, didn’t it? Poor old girl.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Ah well, she got what she wanted. She’s no one but herself to blame if it’s not what she expected.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Amy said doubtfully.

  When they reached the farmhouse, Jimmy put down the baskets in the porch and looked around. ‘No sign of Susannah. What about slipping off for a minute?’

  ‘Well,’ Amy said, torn between duty and the desire to be with him, ‘I probably should start getting dinner on—and Pa said for you to get the cows in.’