Mud and Gold (31 page)

‘Stay and finish your tea,’ Lizzie
protested. ‘He can wait for a bit. Oh, he can come inside and have
a cup if he wants, if I stay this side of the table he won’t be
able to see much of me. We can all pretend not to notice I’m the
size of a house.’

‘No, it’s all right, Lizzie, I don’t want to
keep him waiting or he won’t let me come again. I was lucky he
dropped me off today. Bye bye, Lizzie. Take care of her, Frank.’
She kissed Lizzie and Maudie, scooped David up off the floor, and
was half way to the door when they heard the rattle of gig wheels
approaching. ‘There he is,’ Amy said, flustered by her hurry.

‘Amy!’ They heard Charlie’s voice from
outside.

‘Coming, Charlie,’ she called from the
doorway as soon as she had it open. She was off down the steps at a
run.

*

‘Boy, she went like a scalded cat,’ Frank
said, looking after Amy in bemusement. ‘She sure jumps when Charlie
says to.’

‘Ooh, that man,’ Lizzie said, pursing her
lips in irritation. ‘He expects her to just drop everything when it
suits him. Sometimes I’d just like to… oh, never mind him. Did you
hear any news in town?’

‘What sort of news?’

‘Oh, you know—anyone having babies, or
getting married or anything.’

Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I didn’t
really talk to anyone, just picked up the stuff and came home.’

‘Frank! Honestly, I never get to hear
anything. Amy’s not much use,
he
doesn’t let her talk to
anyone when they go to town. Here’s Maudie and I stuck here getting
sick of one another, and you don’t even bother to fetch any
interesting news for me.’

‘I was in a rush to get home to you,’ Frank
said, letting Lizzie’s reproaches wash over him. ‘I was too busy
thinking about my girls to bother listening to a lot of gossip.
Anyway, I thought it looked a bit like rain, so I was trying to
hurry.’

‘Humph! Well, did you get all the stuff I
told you to?’

‘I think so.’

‘What about those cloves?’

‘Oh. Sorry, Lizzie, I forgot about them. I
had to get some nails and stuff for the fence, and that drove those
things out of my head, I suppose. I’ll get them next week.’

‘Frank Kelly, you’re hopeless,’ Lizzie
scolded. ‘I only asked you to get half a dozen things. Next time
I’ll write you a list and pin it to your shirt if you’re not
careful. How could you forget the cloves when I reminded you just
as you were going out the door? I said—’

‘Hey, what about a bit of respect for your
old man?’ Frank interrupted her tirade with a grin.

‘What about my old man using the brains God
gave him? It doesn’t matter, I’ve still got a few cloves left. Your
tea looks a bit stewed, shall I make a fresh pot? I wouldn’t mind
another cup.’ Lizzie made to rise ponderously.

‘I’ll make it,’ Frank said, getting up and
putting Maudie on his chair. He brushed aside the thought of the
fence repairs he had promised himself he would start on that
morning; an extra few minutes sitting with Lizzie and Maudie was
much more appealing. If he was lucky, that rain the sky had
threatened as he rode home would start soon; then he would have to
leave the fence for another day. ‘I don’t want you falling over,
not the shape you are—if you once started rolling you’d be out the
door and down the hill before I could stop you.’

‘And whose fault is it I’m in this
state?’

‘Well, I’ll admit to a share in it. Amy’s
right, I should look after you. Poor old lump,’ he teased.

‘Old lump,’ Maudie echoed.

‘Shh, Maudie! We’ll have to start watching
what we say in front of her, Frank, she’s a real little
parrot.’

‘Mmm, I don’t want her repeating some of the
things you call me in front of your pa.’ Frank carried the teapot
over to the table and took a seat close to Lizzie. ‘He’d give me a
real talking to if he knew you don’t treat me with proper
respect.’

He leaned across Lizzie’s bulge and planted
a light kiss on her mouth, then glanced down to see Maudie trying
to clamber onto his lap. He helped her up and gave her a squeeze.
Was that respect, the way Amy acted around Charlie? he wondered.
Running around like a frightened rabbit in case she annoyed him? If
that was respect, Frank decided, then he’d just as soon do without
it.

*

Joseph Arthur Kelly came into the world
early in May, with no volcanic eruptions to mark his birth or
terrify his parents. Frank had thought he could not possibly be any
happier; with the birth of his son he found he had been wrong.

‘He’s amazing,’ Frank said, watching Lizzie
struggle to get a fresh napkin on the six-week-old Joseph. The baby
was red-faced with anger as he flung his tiny limbs around, roaring
in protest at the unwanted interference. ‘Look at him kicking!’

‘I’ve been
feeling
him kicking for
months, don’t tell me about how strong he is,’ Lizzie retorted.
‘He’s strong-willed, anyway. I thought Maudie was bad for wanting
her own way. Keep still, you little wretch—oh, don’t say he’s going
to do
that
again when I’ve just got the last mucky nappy off
him—ugh, he’s peeing on my hand! Don’t just stand there looking,
help me! If I move my hand I’ll get the lot in my face.’

Frank quickly soaked up the small fountain
with a fold of napkin and wiped Lizzie’s hand for her. ‘He’s a
brat, all right,’ he said proudly. ‘Do you think he’ll be
tall?’

‘I hope not—if he gets bigger than you,
you’ll never be able to make him do as he’s told. He’s a lot bigger
than Maudie was at this age, though, so he’ll probably be a fair
size.’ She gave an exaggerated sigh of relief when she had at last
managed to get a clean napkin safely pinned and the baby warmly
wrapped up. ‘You men and your sons! You’re all the same. Pa’s made
much more of a fuss about Joey than he ever did over Maudie—though
goodness knows he spoils her rotten. What makes boys so special,
for goodness sake?’

‘Maudie’s special,’ Frank remonstrated. ‘I
mean, she was our first. I wasn’t a father till you had Maudie. It
was so neat when she was born—after I knew you were going to be all
right, anyway—it was awful till then. I don’t know, it’s just… it’s
different having a son. It’s like I’ve done something that’ll carry
on after I’m gone. No, that’s not right, that just sounds
dopey.’

‘Yes, it does. And I don’t see that
you
did so much, either.’ But Lizzie’s face softened as she
looked down at Joseph, still red-faced but now quiet as he drifted
towards sleep. ‘He
is
pretty neat, isn’t he? Come on, let’s
leave your precious son alone before he starts performing again.’
She took Frank’s hand and pulled him out of the bedroom.

‘You’re right, you know, Lizzie, men do make
more of a fuss when you have a son. Even Charlie said something
nice to me when Joey was born.’

‘Did he? I hope he didn’t do himself an
injury—he’s not even used to being polite, let alone pleasant.’

‘Yes, he said congratulations, I must be
pleased I’d finally managed to get a son after all this time.’

Lizzie rounded on him, her eyes flashing.
‘You call that nice! That skitey old so-and-so. Just because he’s
got two boys—that’s because Amy’s so fruitful, there’s nothing
special about him. When I think how knocked out she gets when she
has babies, and all he can do is skite about it! He should be
telling everyone how lucky he is to have a wife like her, not how
wonderful he is at fathering sons. Ooh!’ She clenched her fists in
anger.

‘Hey, don’t get in a state, Lizzie! Don’t
take any notice of Charlie, I sure don’t.’ He caught her around the
waist and drew her close. ‘I don’t need anyone to tell me how lucky
I am.’

*

Lizzie was so obviously in robust good
health that neither she nor Frank thought anything of it when she
started having occasional stomach pains. The cramps were never
particularly strong, and Lizzie put them down to indigestion. Too
much of her own good cooking, Frank teased; the waistline that
refused to return to its pre-motherhood proportions seemed to
support this.

Frank soon had something that seemed more
serious on his mind. One day in the middle of July he was making
his usual morning round of the in-calf cows when he realised three
of them were missing. Puzzled, he counted them off again, but there
was no mistake: where there should have been eighteen cows there
were only fifteen.

Once he began walking the fence line of the
paddock it did not take Frank long to discover how the cows had
disappeared; indeed the small voice of conscience had suggested the
reason as soon as he had double-checked the numbers. When he
reached the section of fence Arthur had warned him about all those
months ago he saw that one of the rotten posts had snapped off near
the ground, probably when a cow had rubbed against it to relieve an
itch. The rails slotted into it on either side had collapsed into
an untidy heap.

Muttering under his breath in annoyance,
Frank first moved the cows still in the paddock to another one
before they could decide to follow their wayward sisters, then he
fetched some rope from one of the sheds and set out to find the
wanderers.

They had left a clear enough trail through
the sodden ground, churning it into mud as they went. Once the
trail entered the bush Frank followed the line of snapped twigs as
much as the hoof prints. He saw clear signs that the cows had
stopped by the creek and waded along its edge for a while, then had
forded it and clambered up the opposite bank, bringing a load of
earth into the creek in the process. His boots soon picked up a
thick layer of mud, dragging heavily at him as he walked. How far
had those stupid cows gone? he wondered. Knowing it was his own
fault the cows had got out did not improve his mood.

He pushed his way through a patch of fern
and felt something catch at his leg. Without thinking beyond the
cows he was seeking he reached down to grasp at the obstruction
then jerked his hand away, swearing as he pulled at the vicious
thorns the cord of bush lawyer had hooked into his palm. He
gingerly unhooked the weed from his trousers and pushed on.

A few minutes later he stopped for a moment
when an odd sound reached his ear. It was certainly an animal, but
he had never heard a cow make quite that noise before. Following
the sound, he found himself in an area where the undergrowth was
thinner. He looked around the small clearing and found what had
been making the noise.

One of his cows lay on the ground, straining
to get to her feet and moaning with the effort. Another was a few
feet away, her unnaturally stiff limbs making it obvious she had
been dead for some hours. Frank knew the cause even before he saw
the scrubby plants around the edge of the clearing with their
distinctive pattern of growth, each leaf directly opposite its pair
on the long, thin branches instead of alternating up the stem:
tutu, the bush farmer’s scourge, and perversely attractive to
livestock.

There was nothing to be done for poor old
Brownie except bury her; Pudding might still be saved, though she
was certain to abort the calf she was carrying. Frank hauled her to
her feet and tied a length of rope around her neck, then led the
stumbling creature well away from the lethal tutu bushes before
tying her up and going in search of the remaining cow. Her track
split off from the other two just outside the clearing; at least
she hadn’t been poisoned, Frank reassured himself.

Patches had not been poisoned, but that was
cold comfort when Frank at last found her. She had made her way
back to the creek, probably seeking her familiar paddock after her
wanderings, but she had never made it. The creek bank was steep at
the point where Patches had slithered down it; far too steep for
the awkward, lumbering animal. She lay on the edge of the creek
where she must have been all night, her head barely out of the
water and one leg stretched away from her body at an unnatural
angle that would have told Frank it was broken even if he had not
been able to see white bone protruding from it.

The most horrifying thing was that Patches
was still alive. Her breath gurgled horribly in her throat and
there was blood trickling from her mouth, but it took more than a
wintry night lying half in the creek with a broken leg to kill a
tough Shorthorn.

The film over Patches’ eyes cleared for a
moment, and those big brown eyes looked at Frank with a flicker of
recognition for the man who had handled her every day of her life.
She roused herself to a last effort and shifted slightly where she
lay, the exertion forcing a grunt of pain from her that would have
been a bovine scream if she had not been too weak to make any real
sound. Frank patted her shoulder and reached for the knife that
hung in a sheath from his belt, then let his hand drop. Cutting the
cow’s throat would be a hellish task, especially if she found the
strength to struggle, and Patches deserved a kinder death than
that. He would keep the knife for skinning the dead cows.

Frank waded the creek, hardly noticing the
chilly water that reached above his knees, then made his way back
to the house at a run. He picked up the shotgun that was lying in
the porch; Lizzie heard the noise and called out to him, but he
ignored her, not trusting himself to speak. He made a short detour
to one of the sheds and snatched up a spade for the graves he would
have to dig, then retraced his steps to where Patches lay, too far
gone now even to open her eyes as he walked up to her.

‘Poor old girl,’ Frank murmured as he
pressed the muzzle of the gun against the cow’s skull and pulled
the trigger.

‘What on earth have you been up to all this
time?’ Lizzie demanded when he at last got back to the house. ‘I’ve
had lunch waiting for ages, I’ve had to give Maudie hers, and…’ She
trailed off, taking in his ashen face and the state of his clothes,
thickly caked with mud well above his knees. ‘Frank, you stink! You
smell like a dog that’s been rolling in something dead. What’s
wrong? What’s happened?’