A Second Chance

by Shayne Parkinson

  ‘Then you may just be doomed to failure,’ said Sarah. ‘Dave’s interests and mine seem to be directly opposed. I suppose expecting him to consider your wishes is not to be hoped for? Ah, now you’re going to scold me for criticising your precious Davie, aren’t you?’

  Amy felt tears of frustration pricking at her eyes. ‘Don’t talk like that, Sarah, please don’t. I wish you could—’

  ‘Oh, Lord, now you’re going to cry, and it’s my doing,’ Sarah interrupted. ‘Come here, my silly Mama, and let your dreadful daughter try and put things right. No, not a word from you until I’ve finished.’

  She drew Amy within the circle of her arm. ‘Let me finish your sentence for you. “I wish you could get to know Dave better. I wish you’d make an effort.” There, it’s said now. But we’ll have no more talk tonight about Auckland or husbands or brothers, or anything else difficult.’

  *

  Sarah was unused to the early hours Amy and David kept. She emerged for breakfast the next morning some time after David had finished his meal and gone off about his work, while Amy was making a batch of scones.

  ‘Late for breakfast again,’ Sarah said cheerfully. She kissed Amy on the cheek and gathered up a plate and knife for herself. ‘No, don’t you go waiting on me, I’m quite capable of getting myself some bread and jam.’

  ‘It wouldn’t take me long to make you a proper breakfast,’ Amy tried. ‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like one?’

  ‘Quite sure, thank you. Unlike you and Dave, I’m doing very little useful work at the moment. I’ve no need for bacon and eggs. Is that tea fresh?’

  ‘Fairly. It’s still hot, anyway.’

  ‘Good. Sit down and I’ll pour us both a cup.’

  Amy wiped her dough-covered hands on her apron and took a seat at the table. ‘You seem very bright this morning, Sarah.’

  ‘Mmm. I took advantage of the still of the night to think things through. I see now that I’ve allowed myself to lose sight of the issues of real import.’ She smiled as she toyed with her cup. ‘Father would have scolded me for that. “Muster your facts, Sarah,” he used to say. “You can’t expect to convince others if you’ve only the woolliest notion of what you’re talking about.” Well, I’ve mustered them now.’

  ‘Have you?’ Amy said, struggling to make sense of Sarah’s words.

  ‘Yes, I have. The facts, then. First: I want you to come to Auckland with me for a good, long visit—I’ll expect you to stay three months at least. Preferably four. Next fact, you want to come as much as I want you to. Are we agreed thus far?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘No buts. They can come later. Now, it seems that the only thing standing in the way of our getting what we want is what’s to be done with Dave while you’re away.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. There’s his meals to get on, and washing and everything. That’s why I can’t go away.’

  Sarah pounced on Amy’s words. ‘Ah, but it’s not quite that simple. That’s something Father taught me later—the facts are not always as clear as they might seem. We’ve looked at the obvious ones, now let’s probe a little deeper.’

  She raised her cup from its saucer and studied Amy over the rim. ‘It’s not difficult to see what needs doing about Dave. There are other people in this valley besides yourself who are capable of cooking meals and washing clothes and goodness knows what else.’

  ‘But I couldn’t expect…’ Under the pressure of Sarah’s steady gaze, Amy heard her voice trailing away. ‘I just couldn’t.’

  ‘The real problem,’ Sarah went on relentlessly, ‘is that you don’t want to upset Dave. Now, that’s getting closer to the truth, isn’t it? You’re reluctant to tell him you want to go away for a while. You’ve spent so long trying to please everyone, trying to keep everybody happy, that taking the risk of upsetting Dave for so trivial a reason as doing something you want is quite beyond you.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Amy protested feebly.

  ‘Ah, but it is. And as if that weren’t enough, you’ve me to cope with.’ Sarah replaced her cup on the saucer and reached out to stroke Amy’s hand. ‘Whenever you dare mention Dave to me, I bristle with indignation and start finding excuses to criticise your darling boy. No wonder you hardly know what you want, let alone how to go about getting it.

  ‘So it’s time I helped you along,’ Sarah announced. ‘Where’s Dave?’

  ‘Down at the potato paddock, I think. What do you want him for?’

  ‘Well, you’ve hinted to me often enough that I couldn’t help but like Dave if I’d only make the effort to get to know him better. I’m not saying I’m completely convinced yet, mind. But we shall see.’ Sarah stood and leaned over to place a kiss on Amy’s cheek. ‘I’m going to make an effort,’ she said over her shoulder as she headed for the back door.

  *

  She found David easily enough; he was in the potato paddock as Amy had said, checking on the mound of potatoes that were to be stored for the winter. He looked up as she approached, and Sarah saw his smile of welcome replaced by a somewhat apprehensive expression.

  ‘I thought you were Ma for a minute,’ he said, not quite meeting her eyes. ‘Is it time for morning tea already?’

  ‘No, not just yet. I left Amy making a batch of the largest scones I’ve ever seen, so I expect they’ll take a while to cook. May I join you for a little? I feel the need of some fresh air.’

  ‘If you want. I don’t know if there’s anywhere clean enough for you to sit, though.’ David looked about for a suitable spot, then snatched up the jacket he had put to one side. ‘Here, you can have this if you like,’ he said, spreading it over a dry patch of ground.

  ‘How chivalrous.’ Sarah lowered herself onto the makeshift seat. ‘Thank you, Mr Stewart. Don’t let me interrupt your work, though.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind getting on with it,’ David said, casting a glance at his potatoes. ‘I’ve just about finished, anyway.’

  Sarah attempted a dispassionate study of David as she watched him spread a final layer of fern fronds over the potatoes. A handsome man; that was undeniable. He was one of the few men Sarah had ever met who topped her own height by several inches, and the well-muscled frame that went with it gave him an impressive stature. His father had bequeathed his height and build to David, but that was the limit of David’s resemblance to Charlie. He had Amy’s dark hair, in David’s case just long enough to betray a hint of curl, and Amy’s large, blue eyes. Disguised by a bonnet, his face would have been pretty enough for a woman’s. Sarah briefly indulged in the mental exercise of surrounding that face with lace and ribbons, completing the picture with a froth of dark curls.

  Yes, he would have made a very pretty woman; prettier than she was herself. He certainly resembled Amy more strikingly than she did. Was that why she felt so jealous of him?

  Her musings brought her up short. Jealous? Of David? How could she be jealous of a man who had spent his life in a rough cottage, apart from three years in a mining camp? His entire possessions consisted of this little farm, the earnings of which, Sarah suspected, would barely be noticed on one of her own balance sheets. Amy had assured her that David had done well at his lessons; be that as it might, his father had taken him out of school as soon as the law allowed, wanting the use of his labour full-time.

  But he had had Amy. All his life she had been there; he had not had to track her down through vague hints and dusty certificates. And it took no great powers of observation to see that Amy loved him with all the depths of affection she was capable of. How could he have valued that so little as to have left her alone when he had gone to the mine?

  She realised that David had stopped working, and was aware of her scrutiny.

  ‘Am I doing something silly?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t believe so. Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s just the way you were looking at me. I thought you were laughing at something a minute ago—something about me. Then you looked as though you wanted to tell m
e off. S’pose that’s not anything out of the ordinary, though.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ Sarah asked, genuinely startled.

  ‘Well, you often do look as though you’d like to go crook at me.’ He lowered his eyes and looked away. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘Oh, please do speak freely, Mr Stewart. This is your property, after all. And you and I will never learn to know one another better if we continually stand on ceremony.’ She saw the quick twist of his mouth that betrayed his thoughts. ‘Now you’re wondering why on earth we should want to get to know one another better, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ David admitted. ‘I mean, Ma likes you and all that, and I’m really happy for her. Ma hasn’t had it too easy, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I do know,’ Sarah agreed feelingly. ‘That’s what I particularly wanted to talk to you about. Sit down, why don’t you? Come along, I don’t often bite. There’s probably room on this jacket of yours.’

  ‘No, over here’ll do. I don’t want to get your fancy dress dirty.’ David squatted down on his heels opposite her.

  It was Amy she wanted to talk about, but David’s odd manner intrigued Sarah. ‘I almost think you’re frightened of me, Mr Stewart,’ she mused aloud. ‘Now, what have I done to deserve that?’

  ‘I’m not really. Well, I suppose I… well, Ma said you were a teacher.’

  ‘Yes, I was. I gave it up last year, when my other obligations grew more demanding. Why does that trouble you particularly?’

  ‘Well, you sort of remind me of this teacher I used to have.’

  ‘Really? Aren’t you a little beyond being afraid of school teachers?’

  ‘You never knew Miss Metcalf. You’re not really like her,’ he added uncomfortably. ‘You sure don’t look like her. It’s just the way you always look as if you want to tell me off. I can just see you with a strap in your hand.’

  ‘I do know how to use one. I don’t think you need worry on that account, though. If for no other reason than that Amy would evict me from the house if I tried it.’

  She saw the warmth of his smile at the mention of Amy. There was no doubting David’s fondness for his mother, though there still remained the mystery of why he had left her alone for so long.

  ‘Amy works terribly hard, doesn’t she?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Yes, she’s always doing something. It’s not like when Pa was alive, though. He took a lot of looking after once he’d got sick.’

  ‘And a lot of putting up with, I imagine.’ She saw David shoot a rapid glance at her, then look away. ‘Don’t you agree?’ Still no reply. ‘Oh, come now, Mr Stewart, it’s a simple enough question. Your father was not a particularly easy man to get along with, was he?’

  David chewed at his lip, opened his mouth and closed it again. Sarah waited, drumming her fingers lightly on her lap. ‘There’s no good dragging up all that old stuff,’ David blurted out at last. ‘It’d only upset Ma, anyway.’

  ‘But she’s not here at the moment,’ Sarah pointed out in her most reasonable voice. ‘And I want to know one or two things. Why did you go to Waihi, Mr Stewart?’

  She saw him shift uncomfortably. It was clear that he did not want to discuss the matter, but Sarah held his gaze coolly. ‘Well?’ she pressed.

  ‘There’s not many jobs I know how to do, ’cept farming. I wanted to go somewhere I could make a bit of money. I thought the mines would pay pretty well.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I don’t mean why you specifically chose Waihi. Why did you leave the farm? Why did you leave Amy alone with your father? How did you expect her to cope?’

  ‘Do you think I wanted to?’ David startled her with his sudden fierceness. ‘Do you think I was happy, leaving her with the old man?’

  As if his outburst had alarmed him, too, he fell silent for a moment, and lowered his voice when he went on. ‘I tried to make her come with me, but she wouldn’t. She said there wouldn’t be anywhere for her to stay in Waihi—she was right, too, I couldn’t have had her staying in the bunkhouse. I was going to send for her as soon as I could get enough money to rent a house or something. I kept thinking I’d be able to soon. I never did, though.’

  ‘And why were you there yourself, Mr Stewart?’ Sarah asked, relentless. ‘Why did you leave the farm?’

  David’s reluctance to answer was almost palpable. ‘Ma says you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ he said under his breath.

  ‘I’ve always thought that of all people the dead were least likely to be harmed by harsh words,’ Sarah mused. ‘Why did you go away, Mr Stewart?’

  David slumped in defeat. ‘I didn’t have much choice. The old man told me to clear out.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, really. I saw enough of your father to know he was capable of that. But you surely could have made some effort to get on with him, couldn’t you? For Amy’s sake, at least.’ She steadfastly ignored the weak flutterings of her conscience as it reminded her that she had found herself incapable of tolerating Charlie in polite silence for more than a few minutes. ‘Why did you have to go squabbling with him?’

  ‘I did try and get on with him,’ David said in a low voice. ‘I put up with him for years and years so’s not to make it harder for Ma. I didn’t care what he said to me—I didn’t!’ he insisted, as if Sarah had contradicted him. ‘But I wasn’t going to let him talk to Ma like that any more.’

  ‘Talk to her like what?’ Sarah prompted, her interest stirred.

  David made a noise of disgust; for a moment Sarah thought he might be going to spit on the ground. ‘Dirty talk. I wouldn’t repeat it in front of you.’ His forehead creased in a frown that seemed to hold as much puzzlement as anger. ‘Awful, awful things he used to say to her. I don’t know why. He used to talk as if she was… well, never mind that. You wouldn’t want to hear it.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. Though I rather think I can guess some of it well enough.’

  ‘Maybe,’ David said doubtfully. ‘Anyway, this last time I was fed up with him. He’d been more of an old so-and-so than ever since Mal died, I was just about sick to death of him. And then he started carrying on with his dirty talk to Ma—it was the worst he’d ever been with it. I told him to shut up, but he just kept going on and on. So I made him shut up. I knocked him down.’

  He heard Sarah’s sharp intake of breath. ‘Pa wasn’t old and sick then like when you met him,’ he said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t have done it if he’d been like that.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t apologise. I think all the better of you for it.’ And it was true. As Sarah pictured David’s fists slamming into Charlie’s face, silencing the filthy words with a crunch of bone on bone, it was as if they were her own fists cramming Charlie’s filth back in on himself. ‘It probably wasn’t particularly sensible, but one can’t always be sensible. Tell me—I can see you’re not comfortable with the subject, but bear with me a little longer—did he often talk to Amy like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ David said grimly. ‘As far back as I can remember. He did more than just talk when I was little, too.’ He saw Sarah’s expression; she sensed that he had not meant to let slip that particular information.

  ‘Do you mean,’ Sarah said in a tightly controlled voice, ‘that he used violence against Amy?’

  ‘He used to thump her, yes. That was only when I was little, though,’ David added quickly. ‘He stopped years and years ago—I don’t know how Ma made him stop, but she did it somehow. I’d never have left her with him if he’d still been carrying on like that.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’ Sarah was aware of the tremble in her voice. How could she have been so naive? she berated herself. How could she not have guessed what Charlie had been capable of?

  ‘And I told him he’d better not try it again, too. The day I cleared out of here, I told him if I ever heard he’d laid a hand on Ma I’d come back and I’d kill him.’

  ‘I see.’ Her response sounded hopelessly inadequate in her own ears, but it was the
best she could summon. They both fell silent, David staring at the ground while Sarah studied him.

  ‘Yes, I do think better of you,’ she said at last. ‘And I think perhaps I understand things a little better now. Thank you for that.’

  David shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Ma doesn’t like people bringing up that old stuff. And he got so sick and everything… well, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the old beggar.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for that. It wasn’t quite my experience. Mr Stewart… oh, that sounds ridiculous! It makes me think of your father, too. May I call you Dave?’

  ‘I wish you would. It sounds like you’re going to tell me off or something when you keep saying “Mr Stewart” all the time.’

  ‘Does it? I hadn’t intended that. And I won’t tell you off unless you give me good reason to. Dave, then. Will you call me Sarah?’

  ‘All right,’ David agreed readily. ‘It’d make you not seem like a teacher so much.’

  ‘Perhaps it would make it easier for us to be… well, friends, I suppose. I think we should be friends, don’t you?’

  ‘If you want.’ David looked somewhat puzzled by her overture.

  ‘Yes, I do want to—for Amy’s sake, if nothing else.’ Sarah smiled thoughtfully. ‘You and I have quite a lot in common, you know.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Yes, we do. Well, we’ve Amy in common, anyway—I mean, we’re both fond of Amy. Perhaps I didn’t realise before just how fond of her you are.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ David’s attention seemed suddenly absorbed by a roughness on one of his fingers; he picked vigorously at it rather than meet Sarah’s eyes. She sensed the deep feeling behind his words, for all their plainness.

  ‘And that fondness we share should be reason enough for us to make an effort to get on. For Amy’s sake.’ She paused, trying to guess the reaction she might get to her next words. ‘I want to take Amy to Auckland with me.’

  David’s head jerked upright. ‘Eh? What do you want to do that for?’