A Second Chance (26 page)

‘But who’ll look after him now? Who’ll get
his dinner on and everything?’

‘He’ll have to look after himself for a bit.
That won’t kill him. Oh, don’t get in such a state over it, girl!
He can go to his Uncle John’s for meals. Anyway, it won’t be for
long, only a week or so. I told him to write to his ma and tell her
to come home. I’ll write to her myself as well, to make sure she
does. I might need her help to sort this out.’

Beth looked over her shoulder at her father,
who was staring grimly at David’s retreating form. She had never
seen such an expression on his face. ‘Y-you always said,’ she
choked out, gulping back a sob, ‘you always said if we were really
bad Pa would get wild at us. But he never did. Maudie told me you
were just saying it to make us behave. I thought that was right. I
thought I’d never see Pa get wild. But now he has. And it’s because
of
me
.’

She dissolved into fresh sobs. Lizzie
stopped in her tracks, took Beth by the shoulders and shook her;
not roughly, but effectively. She waited for Beth to calm herself
enough to pay attention. ‘Of course he’s wild,’ said Lizzie. ‘The
one thing that could get him in a state like this is if he thinks
someone’s done wrong by one of you kids. And that’s why you should
have left it up to me to tell him about all this, not let Dave go
blundering in saying Lord knows what. I’m going to have a beggar of
a job with him now.’

*

Frank’s sons were not the most perceptive of
boys, but they soon caught on that something was up. They had not
witnessed the fight, but had seen how abruptly David had left, and
they noticed their father’s silence and his uncharacteristically
grim expression. They had the sense to keep quiet themselves; there
were some jobs on the farm that were a good deal less pleasant than
others, and none of them wanted to find himself assigned to digging
out drains for the next few days.

Beth was not in the kitchen when Frank and
the boys went in for an unusually quiet morning tea. When they had
had their tea and biscuits, and Maisie had slipped away to take a
cup through to Beth, Frank sent the boys off ahead of him and
paused in the doorway. ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he said
before Lizzie had a chance to speak. ‘And you’ll be wasting your
breath. I’m not letting him marry her, and that’s that.’

Lizzie opened her mouth, closed it again,
then contented herself with, ‘We’ll see’. Frank went out without
waiting to hear if she had anything to add.

For the rest of the day he had no private
conversation with Lizzie. He did not see Beth until dinner time,
when she sat pale and silent, toying with her food, but he was sure
that Lizzie had spent much of the day talking to her.

Only when he and Lizzie were alone in the
darkness of their room did she raise the subject again, keeping her
voice low so that they could not be heard through the wall. ‘Frank,
we need to talk about this.’

‘She’s not marrying him.’

‘Frank��’

‘No, my mind’s made up. He might have
thought he could get her by doing that to her, but he’s wrong. He’s
lucky I’m not getting the law on him.’

‘Eh? What for?’

‘For raping her, of course!’ Frank said
fiercely.

‘Don’t talk rot. From what she’s told me,
she was as keen on it as he was.’

There were things Lizzie could say that
Frank would not have permitted from anyone else in the world. This
was one of them. That did not mean he wanted to believe it. ‘I
don’t know how you can talk like that about your own daughter.’

‘And I don’t know how you can talk such
nonsense. Of course he didn’t rape her! If he’d tried forcing her,
she’d have told me straight away. And she certainly wouldn’t have
wanted to keep going back there.’

Much as he would have liked to dispute it,
Frank had to admit the sense in Lizzie’s argument. ‘Well… if she
did go along with it, that’s only because she didn’t know what she
was doing.’

‘And what makes you think he did?’

‘Because he’s older than her! He’s a grown
man, and she’s just a little girl.’

‘He’s only eighteen, Frank. And I don’t seem
to remember you knowing all that much about it when you were a good
few years older than he is. No one fooled anyone, and no one forced
anyone. They want to get married, and the best we can do is let
them.’

‘No.’

He felt Lizzie roll onto her side, facing
him. ‘Frank, I’m not saying this is how I’d have wanted things to
turn out, any more than you would. Especially with Beth being so
young—I’d’ve rather had her wait till she was eighteen to get
married. But it’s not so bad. Beth’s got all her funny little ways,
wanting to look after birds and kittens and all that, and happier
out on the farm with you than inside helping me. She’s said herself
enough times that she’d never want to go and live in town like
Maudie did. There’s not all that many men would suit a girl like
her. But Dave’s almost as funny as she is. He’s just right for
her.’

‘No, he’s not. He’s not right at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘Isn’t it flaming obvious? He’s Charlie’s
son. My daughter’s not going to marry Charlie Stewart’s son.’

‘Frank! Are you blaming the boy for who his
father was?’

‘It’s nothing to do with blaming. I’m just
trying to look after my daughter.’

‘Of course you are, but have a bit of sense.
What are we going to do when the baby arrives? What do you think
that’ll be like for Beth? Sixteen—no, she’ll be seventeen by
then—with a baby and no husband. That’s not much of a life, is it?
Is that what you want for her?’

The baby was an uncomfortable fact Frank
would rather have ignored. ‘We’ll have to make the best of it.
We’ll… I don’t know, we’ll probably tell people it’s ours. No one’d
think twice about you having another one. As long as Dave keeps his
mouth shut, no one outside the family’ll find out.’

‘And how are you going to make him do that?
Hit him?’

‘If I have to.’

‘Humph! You know perfectly well he let you
thump him today. If he’d raised a hand to you, you’d’ve been flat
on your back before you knew what had hit you.’ Only the fact that
this was undeniably true stopped Frank from arguing the point.

‘And what about Beth?’ Lizzie went on. ‘Do
you think she’d go along with pretending it’s not her baby? Because
I don’t. You can stop her from marrying Dave, but you can’t stop
her wanting to see him. What happens when the baby’s born, and she
wants to take it over to see its father? Will you tell her she
can’t?’

Frank tried to keep the distaste he felt for
such a task out of his voice. ‘I’ll just have to. She’s too young
to know her own mind. That’s why I have to decide these things
myself.’

‘Well, you’re going to have to watch her
every minute. Because
I’m
not going to tell her she can’t
take her own baby to see its father.’

‘Shut up about it!’ Frank said, a good deal
more sharply than he had meant to. ‘I’ll do whatever I have to, if
it means keeping Beth safe.’

Lizzie somehow contrived a silence that was
as eloquent as if she had spoken. Frank rolled over and pretended
to go to sleep.

He was on the point of genuinely falling
asleep when Lizzie spoke again, dragging him back into
consciousness. ‘So you’d shut her up in the house?’ She sounded
annoyingly alert.

‘Eh?’ Frank said groggily.

‘Beth. Is that what you’d do to keep her
away from Dave? Keep her shut up in the house?’

‘It won’t come to that.’

‘I don’t see why it wouldn’t. She’s going to
want to see him, and you say she’s not allowed to. So you’ll make
her ask your permission every time she wants to leave the farm? And
you’ll say no if you don’t like where she’s going? You’ll treat her
like a child, even when she’s got a baby of her own?’ Frank was
still fumbling for a response when Lizzie went on. ‘That’s just
what Charlie used to do to Amy. I never thought that was right,
myself. I didn’t think you did, either.’

‘That’s different.’

‘Is it?’

There was another long silence; again Frank
was on the point of sleep. ‘Well, we’ll leave it for now,’ Lizzie
said.

‘We’ll leave it for good.’ Frank lay awake
for a long time, waiting for Lizzie to say aloud what he knew she
was thinking.

*

For much of the following day, Frank saw
only glimpses of Beth. She sat with the family for meals, able to
disappear in the noise and bustle of ten people at the dinner
table, but at other times of the day, if Frank came into a room she
would slip quietly out of it. After dinner, she sat in the parlour
only long enough after Rosie and Kate had been sent to bed for her
to be sure the little girls were asleep. As Maisie, who Frank was
sure had been told what was going on, went off to bed with her, and
Lizzie seemed not to have much to say during the evening, the
parlour was unusually dull.

The little he saw of Beth was enough to show
him how unhappy she was. His inability to do anything to help her
did not improve his mood.

‘Now, about Beth and Dave,’ Lizzie began as
soon as she had put out the lamp and joined him in bed.

‘There’s nothing more to say about it—and
there’s no use going on with the same stuff.’

‘Yes, there is. I have to keep on about it,
because you won’t see what’s staring you in the face. You know
Beth’s miserable, don’t you?’

‘I’m not blind, Lizzie.’

‘Well, the only way you’re going to see her
happy again is if you let her marry Dave.’

‘No. We’ll just have to do our best for her
here.’

Lizzie’s hair tickled his face as she shook
her head. ‘It can’t be done, Frank. We can’t make her happy, not
with a baby on the way. The only one who can do that is Dave.’

‘He could make her pretty miserable, too. He
could give her the sort of life his father gave Amy.’

‘No, he couldn’t—because he’s
not
his
father. Dave hasn’t got it in him to be cruel.’

Frank made a noise of disgust. ‘I don’t see
why not. He’s Charlie Stewart’s son.’

‘He’s Amy’s son. There’s much more of her
than Charlie in him.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘Well, I do.’

Frank made no answer beyond another
disbelieving snort.

Lizzie had a knack of waiting just long
enough to catch him on the edge of sleep. ‘I don’t know why you’re
so set against it,’ she said. ‘You’ve always been fond of
Dave.’

‘That was before he did this to Beth. I see
what he’s like now. He’s as bad as that Jimmy, taking advantage of
a girl and getting her in this state.’

‘Of course he’s not! Jimmy had his fun then
ran off. Dave wants to marry Beth. He wants to do right by her.
You’re the only one stopping him.’

Her accusation stung all the more for
Frank’s awareness of the truth behind it. ‘He can’t do right by
her,’ he said, uncomfortably aware of the shallowness of his
argument. ‘That dump of a place, and his mongrel cows. He’s no
business thinking of getting married at all, let alone to one of my
daughters.’

There was a long pause, as if Lizzie could
hardly believe what she had heard. ‘And do you think you were such
a wonderful catch when we first got married? What about when you
got in that muddle over Ben’s money? No, I don’t want to drag up
old things,’ she went on, too quickly for Frank to protest. ‘But it
seems pretty mean to say Dave’s got no right to marry Beth just
because he hasn’t got enough money. Frank, you came jolly close to
losing the farm back then. But I never for a moment thought I
shouldn’t have married you because money was tight. I just knuckled
down and made ends meet, and did my best to help you through it.
Just having you and the kids, that was enough for me. And now you
think Dave’s not good enough for one of our girls? I never thought
you’d turn into a snob.’

‘It’s not the same thing at all,’ Frank
said, scrabbling desperately at the moral high ground as he felt it
slipping away from him. ‘This place was much better than his
dump.’

‘Is it Dave’s fault you had a better father
than he did?’

She had no business being so irritatingly
right. ‘Well… he should have had a go at smartening it up before he
thought about getting married. He should have waited a few
years.’

He heard Lizzie sigh. ‘Frank, I might even
agree with you if it wasn’t for the baby. He’s too young—they both
are. But there’s no sense thinking like that, not now.’

‘And there’s no sense going on about this,
either. Now, can I get some sleep?’

*

Sleep was fast becoming an elusive memory.
Lizzie contented herself with reproachful looks during the daytime,
but she renewed her assault the next night.

‘Beth’s making herself ill over this, you
know,’ she began. ‘She’s hardly eaten a thing these last couple of
days. I made her have some dinner, but she sicked it up later.’

‘Well, that’s just morning sickness, isn’t
it? You used to get a bit of that.’

‘No, it isn’t. I think I know more about
that than you do. No, it’s just from being so miserable. Maisie
told me Beth’s been crying half the night—crying till she’s sick.
I’m starting to wonder…’

She trailed off; the uneasiness in her voice
gave Frank a jolt. ‘You really think she’s crook, Lizzie?’

‘Yes, I do. I just about wonder if she might
lose the baby.’

‘That wouldn’t be such a bad thing.’ Frank
said it under his breath, but Lizzie heard him.

‘Frank! What an awful thing to say about
your own grandchild!’

‘Charlie Stewart’s grandchild,’ Frank
muttered.

‘Yes, Charlie’s grandchild. And my
grandchild. And Amy’s—the only one she’s ever likely to have, if
you get your way.’

Frank grunted. ‘I don’t know about that.
He’ll get hold of some other girl.’