Mud and Gold (48 page)

Lizzie looked deflated. ‘No, you’re
right—she’s too scared of him for that. Well, I wouldn’t put up
with it.’

‘You won’t have to.’ Frank gave her arm a
quick squeeze before trying to find his lost place on the magazine
page.

‘Amy’s very pale lately, don’t you think?’
Lizzie asked. She had been musing off and on over Amy’s pallor and
air of distraction since seeing her the previous morning.

‘Mmm?’ Frank looked up from the magazine,
abandoning his attempt to concentrate on it. He thought back to how
Amy had appeared at church, but Lizzie was right: Charlie had
dragged her away too quickly for Frank to take much notice of her.
Amy certainly did not have Lizzie’s air of robust good health. ‘I
suppose she does a bit. Do you think she’s sick or something? Maybe
she’s got a baby on the way.’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘No. She would have
told me if she was—I thought she would’ve been with child again by
now, but I’m glad she’s having a rest from it. I don’t know, she
just doesn’t look right. I suppose she might be pining over the
baby that died.’

‘She needs to have another one, eh? Take her
mind off the one she lost.’

‘That’s what people always say,’ Lizzie said
pensively. ‘If a woman has another baby she forgets all about
losing one. I don’t think it’s that simple, you know. Not for
someone like Amy, anyway—she feels things harder than other people.
Poor old Amy.’

Frank looked at Lizzie in surprise,
wondering what had suddenly made her sound so sad. ‘Are you really
worried about Amy? What do you think’s wrong with her?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ Lizzie said, briskly
matter-of-fact again. ‘Amy’s got a lot to put up with, that’s all.
Sometimes I get upset about it because it’s not fair. What are you
reading, anyway? You’ve had your nose stuck in that magazine for
ages.’

For a moment Frank almost felt that Lizzie
was trying to distract him by changing the subject, but he was
willing enough to be distracted. ‘Your pa’s been giving me these
magazines when he’s finished with them for years, but I’ve only
started reading them properly the last few months. This one’s
really interesting. It’s about these cows—Jerseys, they’re
called—do you want to have a look?’ He held his open magazine out
towards Lizzie.

‘Cows?’ Lizzie said in amazement. ‘Don’t you
have enough to do with cows every day without reading about
them?’

‘Not cows like this. Have a look at them.’
He placed the magazine on her lap. Lizzie gave an exaggerated sigh,
pushed her sewing to one side and studied the picture.

‘Oh, they’re pretty!’ she exclaimed. ‘Not
like ordinary cows at all. They’re a bit thin, though. Are they
healthy?’

‘They must be. I was reading this bit down
here,’ Frank traced his finger down the page until he found what he
was looking for. ‘Here it is—look at how much milk they produce.
About four gallons a day each—that’s about the same as the
Shorthorns. But it’s got more cream in it than any other sort of
cow gives—see, it says that over here. You can get over five parts
in a hundred butterfat.’

‘Is that a lot?’

‘Well, it’s more than our old Shorthorns
give. They reckon here that Shorthorns give about four parts in a
hundred, but that’s for the best Shorthorns, not my old mongrels.
Shall I have a go at working out how much more it’d be?’

‘No, don’t worry about it. Take your
magazine back, Frank, I want to get these buttonholes finished,
then you’ll be able to wear this shirt tomorrow.’

The germ of an idea was starting to form in
Frank’s mind. If these fancy cows produced milk so much richer than
he got from his Shorthorns, a herd of Jerseys the same size as
Frank’s would deliver far more butterfat, and thus more money. And
it would not be too many cows for one man to milk. ‘I think I will
work it out, Lizzie.’

He fetched his diary from the bedroom,
careful not to wake Beth who was sleeping peacefully in her cradle.
‘Have you seen my pencil?’ he asked when he was back in the
parlour.

‘I tidied it away somewhere. Look in the
drawer under the window.’

‘I looked there. That’s where I left
it.’

‘No, you didn’t. You left it lying on the
dressing table, that’s why I tidied it away.’

‘Where did you put it, then?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Frank. I’ll find it
tomorrow, I’m busy now with this sewing.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll find it.’ Frank crossed
the passage to the bedroom again and rummaged around in several
drawers until he seized on the missing pencil and carried it back
to the parlour. ‘Found it!’ he announced.

‘Where?’

‘In the drawer you said,’ Frank admitted.
Lizzie glared at him, but without any real wrath, and returned to
her sewing while Frank began writing figures on a blank page in his
diary.

In the few minutes that followed, the
silence was broken only by occasional sighs from Frank that
gradually grew deeper and deeper. He glanced at Lizzie from time to
time, but she stitched away determinedly, not meeting his eyes,
till at last Frank had to admit defeat.

‘Could you give me a hand with this,
Lizzie?’ he asked.

‘No, I couldn’t,’ Lizzie said sharply. ‘I
told you, I’m busy. Stop going on about those cows, for goodness
sake!’

‘Aw, go on.’ Frank slipped his arm around
her and gave her a squeeze.

Lizzie held herself stiff for a moment, then
gave a sigh and relaxed into his hold. ‘All right, I haven’t a hope
of concentrating on this with you going on. What do you want?’

‘I’m trying to work out how much money I’d
get from all the cream a herd of these Jerseys would give, but it’s
all full of so many pence a pound and all that. I can’t do it by
myself.’

Lizzie gave him an apprehensive look. ‘I
don’t think I’ll be much help. I was never much good at sums.’

‘Neither was I. That’s why I need you to
help.’

‘No, honestly, Frank, I’m hopeless at them.
Adding up and things, that’s easy enough, but I hate those really
hard sums with lots of things to multiply and stuff. I think Miss
Evans must have worn a whole strap out on me, trying to get me to
do them properly.’

‘She must have worn out two on me, then. She
used to be nice about it, you know. Sometimes she’d keep me behind
after school and have a little talk about sums and things. I
remember her saying, “Frank, I’m sure you could do this work if
you’d only try and concentrate. You’d have no trouble at all if you
stopped dreaming and took more notice of your lessons.”
 
’ He pulled a rueful face at the memory. ‘Then
she’d pull out the strap and get stuck into me.’

‘Humph! She never used to bother saying all
that to me. She’d just get straight into giving me the strap. Just
for getting a few stupid sums wrong! And for talking, too, she was
always going on about talking. “Lizzie Leith, I’ve told you before
about talking in class. Come out to the front.” As if there’s any
harm in talking! I think she enjoyed it.’

‘She must have got sick of strapping you for
talking, she would’ve had to do it every day,’ Frank said. ‘I don’t
think she enjoyed it really, though. She used to look quite sad
sometimes when she did it to me.’ He grimaced. ‘And sometimes Pa
would find out I’d got in trouble at school, then he’d give me a
real hiding.’

‘Why’d he do that?’ Lizzie asked.

Frank slid away from her gaze as he recalled
the unpleasant memory. ‘He used to say no son of his was going to
be an idiot. He reckoned I’d remember my sums better if he beat a
bit of sense into me.’

‘That’s not fair! Giving you a hiding when
you’d already got the strap! Honestly, people can be so mean.’

Frank laughed at the sight of Lizzie with
her eyes flashing. ‘Well, you can’t do anything about it now. Pa’s
too far away for you to give him a piece of your mind. Let’s have a
go at these sums, eh? With the two of us on the job we should be
able to muddle through it, even if neither of us are much
good.’

Lizzie still looked reluctant. ‘It’s Amy you
should be getting to help you, really. She was always good at sums.
Maybe you should wait until she comes around some time.’

‘I don’t
want
Amy to help me. I want
you
to. I want us to do this together, Lizzie. It’s
important.’

‘All right, don’t get in a state about it,’
Lizzie said in surprise. ‘I’ll have a go.’ She gave him a sly grin.
‘Shall I go and get one of your belts? You might be better at doing
the sums if I stand over you and threaten you with it.’

Frank grinned back at her. ‘You could try.
Of course I might just take it off you and teach you how to be a
good, meek little wife.’

‘You’d only try it the once,’ said Lizzie.
‘Forget about the belt, then, I’ll just have to trust you to
behave. Here, pass that diary over so I can have a go.’

Accompanied by much head-scratching and
pencil-chewing, they had soon covered several pages of the diary
with sums, most of them crossed out. ‘I think that’s the answer,’
Lizzie said at last. ‘Five hundred pounds of fat a year—that’s the
hard part, eh? I hate those long division things.’

‘Mmm, do you think we divided the right bits
into each other?’

‘Well, we worked it out all the different
ways and that was the only one that ended up with a sensible
answer.’

‘And then we had to times it by the
sevenpence a pound the factory pays and change it from pence into
pounds and shillings—that was awful. I wonder who decided to make
it so hard, you know, with twelve pence in a shilling and twenty
shillings in a pound.’

Lizzie looked blank. ‘How else could it
be?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, just so’s it worked out
easier. Don’t worry about it, no one’s going to change the way
money works just to make it easier for us.’ He studied their
hard-won answers with interest. ‘So that’s about six shillings a
week, and fifteen pounds in a year from one cow. Three hundred
pounds for twenty cows. That’s a lot! It’s just about twice what I
get now. I bet those cows cost a lot to buy.’

‘Mmm, the people who have that sort of cow
must be well-off.’ Lizzie closed the diary and put it on the floor,
then snuggled into the crook of Frank’s arm. ‘Never mind, Frank,
we’ve got enough money. Don’t go thinking about things you can’t
have.’

‘I wonder if they advertise cows like that
in the paper,’ Frank said thoughtfully. ‘It’d be interesting to
know how much they cost. Then I could work out if it was
worth—’

‘Not more sums!’ Lizzie interrupted, rolling
her eyes at the idea. ‘Not tonight, anyway, I couldn’t bear it.’
She covered her mouth as a yawn escaped from her.

‘Tired?’ Frank asked.

‘Mmm. I’m always worn out on a Monday night,
washing’s hard work. I remember hearing Ma talking to Mrs Carr
once, the two of them were saying Monday should be the wife’s night
off. I didn’t know what they were talking about then, but Ma was
giggling like an idiot.’ She yawned again. ‘I can hardly keep my
eyes open. Do you want to come to bed?’

‘Yes, figuring all that stuff out’s hard
work too, eh?’

It took Lizzie much longer to extricate
herself from her layers of clothing than it did for Frank to
undress, and he was already in his nightshirt by the time she was
ready for him to help her out of her stays. She gave a sigh of
relief when he had unlaced her.

‘Ahh, that feels better. That dress is
getting tighter and tighter,’ she complained as she stepped out of
the stays.

‘I wonder why,’ Frank teased. He slipped his
arms around her and squeezed, enjoying the soft feel of her body
through her chemise.

‘Having all your babies, that’s why. Let go,
Frank, it’s too cold to stand around in my underwear.’

Frank released her. He climbed into bed and
watched as she shed the rest of her clothes and pulled on her
nightdress, then bent over Beth’s cradle.

‘She’s sound asleep, the good little thing,’
Lizzie said, a fond smile playing around her mouth. ‘She’s the best
sleeper of the three of them, and we’ve been lucky with them all,
really.’ Lizzie tucked the little girl in snugly before climbing
into bed beside Frank.

‘Frank?’ she whispered as Frank leaned over
to the bedside table to put out the lamp. She sounded half-asleep
already.

‘Mmm?’ he answered as quietly, both of them
careful not to wake Beth.

‘You know how you said you used to get in
trouble for dreaming at school?’

‘I sure did. Miss Evans was always telling
me off for staring out the window instead of doing my work.’

‘Well, what were you thinking about all the
time?’

Frank pulled her towards him in the
darkness. They snuggled close against the night chill. ‘I don’t
know. All sorts of things, I suppose. Like… well, how the valley
must have looked when it was all trees. And how the different sorts
of trees grow—you know, some are tall and pointy, and some are
bushy. Why tuis have got those white feathers on their chests. Why
sometimes there’s smoke coming from White Island.’

‘No wonder Miss Evans got annoyed with you.
You must have hardly got any work done, looking out the window all
the time.’

‘There was Ma, too.’ Frank lay quietly for a
few moments, holding Lizzie a little tighter as the feeling of loss
washed over him. ‘I used to wonder why she had to be so sick. She
never moaned or anything, but her face was all sort of pinched from
it. Some days she was better, then I’d think she was going to get
well again. Then she’d get worse.’ And she had slowly faded away,
till one day she had died in this very bed, but Frank could not
bring himself to finish the story aloud. ‘She was nice,
Lizzie.’

‘I know,’ Lizzie whispered, pressing against
him. ‘Ma liked her a lot. I wish I remembered her.’

‘I didn’t go to school all that much,
anyway,’ Frank went on more lightly. ‘Sometimes Pa needed me to
help him and Ben. I got up to Standard Three, then I just stopped
going. Miss Evans was probably pleased to see the back of me.’