Mud and Gold (38 page)

It took many weeks for Lizzie to recover her
full strength. All through her long convalescence, Frank hovered
solicitously over her whenever he was not busy on the farm. As she
became stronger Frank spent more and more time working, amazed at
all the things he had left undone or done half-heartedly over the
years. Even the weeds scattered through his paddocks, which he had
always accepted as the natural state of the pasture, now seemed an
inarguable sign of his neglect, and he set to work destroying
them.

Seeing how much Lizzie was fretting for the
children, within a few days of her return to consciousness Frank
insisted that Edie let Maudie come home, and he gladly took on the
task of looking after her until Lizzie was well enough to get up.
He soon gained new skills in feeding, washing and dressing little
girls, but he reluctantly admitted that caring for a baby was
beyond him. Amy gradually weaned Joey over the next few weeks, and
by the time Lizzie was well enough to care for him Joey was ready
for solid food.

By autumn Lizzie was so well that it was
hard to believe she had ever been ill. But the illness had left its
marks. Her hair would take years to regain its former length, and
it was months before she could easily pin it up under a bonnet. The
weight she had lost was more readily replaced; Frank soon found he
had a warm armful to cuddle again.

The changes in Frank were not so visible,
but they were deeper and more long-lasting. Never again would he
take happiness for granted. It was something to be worked for, and
to give thanks for every day. No longer did he surprise Lizzie by
coming back to the house an hour or two before she expected; now
she had to get used to keeping meals warm in the evening while she
waited for Frank to finish some vital piece of work that simply
would not wait until the next day. Whenever he had to go out he
spent most of the time away from the farm thinking about what he
should do when he got back.

‘Frank, you’ve gone mad,’ Lizzie complained
one evening when Frank finally came in for his dinner half an hour
after sunset. ‘I was beginning to think I’d have to come looking
for you with a lantern.’

‘I’ve got a lot of wasted time to make up,’
said Frank. ‘I’m going to make this farm pay.’

‘That doesn’t mean you have to work all
hours of the day and night! You’ll knock yourself out.’

‘No, I won’t. I’m just working hard for a
change.’ He stepped up behind Lizzie as she stood at the range
dishing up his meal, and slipped his arms round her waist. ‘I
nearly lost you,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘I nearly lost my Lizzie.
I’m never going to risk that again.’

There was one resolution he found more
difficult to keep. The first night he once again joined Lizzie in
their bed, he told her very solemnly that it would be for the best
if she did not have any more babies for some time; at least until
she was back to her full strength. Lizzie agreed with equal
solemnity, and explained that since she had had to stop
breastfeeding Joey so early she would be likely to get with child
almost at once if they did not take care. But they soon found that
good intentions were no match for natural impulses. In March Lizzie
told Frank there would be another child in November, when Joey
would be barely eighteen months old.

When he had got over the guilty awareness of
his lack of self-control, Frank could not help but be pleased,
especially as Lizzie was so delighted. He watched her anxiously for
any sign of illness as her pregnancy advanced, but Lizzie bloomed
as she swelled.

*

Late in the month John Leith startled his
family with the announcement that he was going to get married. Not
the news of the marriage itself; most of the population of Ruatane
had been expecting to hear that was imminent for many months, ever
since John had first started his frequent visits to the Carrs’.
What caused such surprise was his choice of wife. No one was more
astonished than Martha Carr when John went to see her father, not
to ask for her hand but for her younger sister Sophie’s.

‘It’s not fair!’ Martha wailed to her
mother. ‘He was meant to ask me! What’s he want her for, anyway?
She’s
fat
.’ She was doomed to an unsympathetic hearing;
after she got over the surprise, Mrs Carr was philosophical about
having disposed of one daughter when all her efforts had been
devoted to placing the other.

Martha soon decided to make the best of it,
especially once her mother had comforted her with assurances that
it would be her turn before too long. Mrs Carr insisted Martha have
a bridesmaid’s dress at least as elaborate as Sophie’s wedding gown
for the April wedding; after all, as she told her husband, Sophie
had already got herself a man. Making the most of Martha’s
attractions was much more sensible.

By the time of the wedding Amy was almost
four months gone with a new pregnancy, and she fretted over whether
or not she should attend. Desire to go to her brother’s wedding
outweighed the worry that her condition might be visible; she
comforted herself with the memory that at the same stage of her
three earlier pregnancies she had barely shown. For a while it had
seemed that nausea, far more violent and dragging on for longer
than she was used to, might deny her the outing, but at last it
subsided into mere morning sickness instead of attacking her all
through the day.

Lizzie’s baby was due two months later than
Amy’s, so she had no such worries about appearing at the wedding.
In fact, Frank would have found it difficult to keep her away from
her first important social occasion since her illness.

‘Now, you’re sure you feel up to it?’ he
asked as they drove to the Carrs’ house after the wedding service.
‘You just tell me if you get a bit tired, we can go home whenever
you like.’

‘Frank, for goodness sake,’ Lizzie said.
‘Stop treating me like I was still sick. Honestly, I hardly even
get the chance to talk to anyone when we go to town, you’re always
in such a tearing hurry to get back to work. You needn’t think
you’re going to do me out of a bit of fun today.’

‘I just don’t want you getting worn out.
I’ll make sure there’s a proper armchair for you.’

‘Oh, no, you won’t! You can leave the
armchairs for the old women, thank you very much.’

Lizzie gathered up her two children and made
straight for the corner of the parlour where most of the other
women had congregated. She and Amy took full advantage of their
chance to chat.

‘What I can’t understand,’ Lizzie said, ‘is
just how he ever got around to asking her. I mean, look at them
now—have you even seen them speak to one another?’

‘No,’ Amy agreed, studying John and Sophie
where they stood in the centre of the room, close by a table which
Mrs Carr and Martha, helped by the Carrs’ oldest daughter Tilly,
were busily loading more and more food on. ‘But I’ve seen them
smile at each other a few times.’

‘Smiling’s all very well, but it’s a bit
hard to propose like that. Now, if it had been Martha I could
understand it. She would have asked him herself—either that or he
would have asked her just to shut her up.’

‘Shh, Lizzie! Martha will hear you.’

‘No, she won’t. She’s not taking any notice
of us, she’s too busy eyeing up all the men to see who she can
chase after next.’ Martha was indeed showing no sign of feeling
rejected; she was clearly making her best effort to be charming to
any unattached young man whose attention she managed to catch.

*

‘Well, that’s another of those girls married
off,’ Mr Carr remarked to any of the men standing close to him who
cared to listen. ‘It’s an expensive business, getting rid of
daughters. You’ll have that one day, Frank.’

‘Hey, hang on! Maudie’s not even three yet,’
Frank protested with a laugh.

‘The time goes fast enough. Sophie’ll make
John not a bad wife—she’s the best of the lot of them, really.
She’s the only one who didn’t inherit her ma’s tongue, anyway. Can
I pour you a beer, Charlie—oh, you’ve already helped yourself.’ He
poured himself a mug instead, and topped up Frank’s glass.

‘Yes, she’s not a bad girl, is Sophie,’ he
went on. ‘John won’t have got anything out of her, either, she’ll
have kept herself decent. Her and Martha both, they’d never dare
open their legs till they had a ring on their finger. Not after
that trouble we had with Tilly.’ He glanced over his shoulder
towards Tilly’s husband, a sullen-faced young man with an
expression that said he wished he were elsewhere.

‘He’s a no-hoper, that one,’ Mr Carr
muttered to his listeners. ‘Good at making babies, but not too keen
on any other sort of work. He’s had jobs on half the farms around
Katikati, he gets sick of it after a couple of months and tries
another place. I’ll probably have to have the two of them here in
the end. Well, if he plays his cards right he’ll get this farm when
I’m gone. He reckoned it wasn’t his brat, but Tilly swore it was,
and her ma believed her. She’s no soft touch, my old woman—if she
believed Tilly, then it was the truth. She gave that girl a hell of
a hiding when she found out there was a child on the way.’

‘Wasn’t it a bit late for that?’ Frank
asked.

‘Too late for Tilly, right enough. But she
made the other two stand and watch while she did it. I don’t know
which girl was yelling the loudest by the time she’d finished. No,
John’ll get his first go at Sophie tonight. I don’t know if he’s
tried it on before, but she’ll have given him short shrift if he
has.’ He looked across the room at Martha, who was taking
animatedly to an amused-looking Bill. ‘Course, the trouble with
Martha is, I don’t know if she’s got much chance of getting a
husband bar using the same way Tilly did. She hasn’t got much going
for her. She’s got her ma’s looks and her ma’s tongue, but she
didn’t get her ma’s cunning.’

Charlie downed the last mouthful from his
mug and refilled it. ‘You wed the woman,’ he said, voicing the
thought that Frank had kept to himself.

‘Well, we all do stupid things when we’re
young. Don’t you go being so bloody smug, Charlie Stewart, not when
you’re drinking my beer. Just because you scored that tasty little
piece.’ He looked across the room at Amy. Frank saw Amy turn and
stare back, then quickly look away, as if she had sensed she was
being observed. Now that his eyes had drifted in that direction,
Frank studied Lizzie, taking pleasure in the sight of her blooming
health. She did not catch his eye, but she waved her new fan in a
rather ostentatious way, making Frank smile even more broadly. ‘I
don’t know how you did it, Charlie,’ Mr Carr said, openly envious.
‘The best looking bit of skirt in this town, and barely ripe when
you got her.’

‘I’ll thank you to keep your eyes to
yourself,’ Charlie said, fixing Mr Carr with a grim expression.

‘All right, all right, I’m just looking.
I’ll leave the baby snatching to you. When you’ve got a looker like
that, Charlie, you’ve got to expect to have her stared at. I notice
you’ve got her with child again.’

‘That’s right,’ Charlie said with evident
self-satisfaction.

‘You don’t muck about, do you? Making up for
lost time, eh? What are you grinning about, Frank?’

‘What?’ Frank dragged his eyes back to his
companions. ‘Oh, I was just thinking about Lizzie. She looks good,
eh?’

Mr Carr laughed. ‘Now, that’s the sign of a
man who hasn’t been married long—a room full of women, and he’s
only got eyes for his wife. She’s got over that bad patch all
right?’

‘Yes, she seems really well now. I still
keep an eye on her, try and stop her from overdoing things.’

‘My wife fed his son while his wife was
poorly,’ Charlie put in. ‘My son was still on the breast then. But
she had plenty of milk for two bairns, so I let her feed both.’

‘Ah, yes, Charlie, I think you might have
mentioned that once or twice,’ Mr Carr said, rolling his eyes at
Frank. ‘Maybe a few more times than that.’

*

Susannah glided towards Amy in her gown of
bronze silk with brocade bodice, choosing a moment when Lizzie had
gone to refill her plate. It was the dress she had worn on her
first Sunday in Ruatane, but even now almost eight years later it
still outshone any other outfit in the room.

‘You shouldn’t be here, Amy,’ Susannah said
in a low voice. ‘You’re
showing
.’

All Amy’s pleasure in her outing evaporated
in a moment. She looked down at the blue silk gown that had to do
service as her only good dress. It was true that its close fitting
style meant the dress was already uncomfortably snug. ‘I’m only
just showing. I don’t think anyone will see. No one’s taking any
notice of me today, anyway.’

‘I’m afraid you’re wrong about that. Your
condition’s quite obvious.’

Amy looked around the room, imagining all
eyes on her in disapproval. She knew it would be no use asking
Charlie if they could go home, not when there was so much free beer
still to be drunk. ‘I can’t help it,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’d never
get out of the house if I had to wait for a time when I wasn’t with
child or nursing a new baby. I’m always in this state.’ She turned
her back on Susannah and walked away to what she hoped was an
inconspicuous corner.

‘Hey, I don’t think I’ve had a wedding kiss
from you yet,’ she heard a voice behind her. Amy turned and saw
John advancing on her while Sophie circulated among some of the
guests.

‘Haven’t you?’ Amy put her arms around his
neck and kissed him. ‘Congratulations, John. I hope you and Sophie
will be really happy.’

‘We’ll be all right,’ John said. He glanced
over to where Sophie was showing off her new wedding ring to an
admiring audience, and Amy saw a complacent smile play around his
mouth. ‘Sophie’s good. I tell you what, she’s looking forward to
getting out of here. Martha’s been giving her a real hard time
since she found out we were getting married.’