Mud and Gold (57 page)

By the end of March, though her face was far
from back to normal she no longer looked horrifying. Indeed, there
was a new calmness about her that a more perceptive man than
Charlie might have wondered at. She had been aware for days that
his scrutiny of her face must be telling him the worst of her
injuries had healed, so it was no real surprise when the crisis
came.

It was a cool evening at the end of a bright
day. The boys had been in bed for hours. Amy sat at her sewing and
Charlie read his newspaper, casting occasional glances at her.

He folded his paper noisily and put it down
on the floor by his chair, then stood up and lit a candle from the
lamp. ‘I’m going to bed,’ he said, extinguishing the lamp as he
spoke.

Amy stopped in mid-stitch when the lamplight
disappeared. She slipped her needle into the cuff of the shirt she
was mending and bundled the shirt into her sewing bag. ‘Good
night,’ she said as she struck a match to light her own candle. She
gathered up their tea cups from beside the chairs and carried them
through to the kitchen, expecting Charlie to go straight into the
bedroom.

Instead she heard his heavy tread following
her into the kitchen.
So it’s to be tonight
. She put the
candle and the cups down on the table and shut her eyes for a
moment, gripping the rough wood of the table as if to gather its
strength into herself, then turned and looked straight at
Charlie.

‘I thought you were going to bed.’

‘Aye, so I am. And so are you. There’s
nothing wrong with you now.’

‘Nothing that shows, no.’

‘So there’s no need for you to go off to the
other room any more. You can come back where you belong.’ He had
half turned to go, too sure of being obeyed to bother waiting, when
Amy answered.

‘No.’

The word dropped heavily into the silence of
the dim room, like a stone flung in a pool. Charlie turned back and
stared at her, his face grim in the flickering light of the
candle.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said no.’ Her voice rose on the last
word. ‘I’m not coming to bed with you.’

‘I’m telling you you’re coming—you’re coming
right now.’ Amy knew the irritation in his voice would soon turn
into something stronger.

‘And I’m telling you I’m not.’

‘Are you defying me, woman?’ Still he seemed
to doubt that he was hearing her properly.

‘Call it that if you want. I’m not coming
back to your bed. That’s all over between us.’

‘I’ll not have you talking to me like
that—I’ll show you what happens when you don’t do as you’re told.’
He took a step towards her; Amy held her ground and stared back
defiantly. ‘You’re going to feel that stick on your backside—I’ll
teach you not to disobey me.’

‘No, you’re not going to do that,
Charlie.’

The calmness of her voice brought him up
short, and almost despite himself he asked, ‘Why not?’

He towered over her; Amy had to crane her
neck to look him in the eye. She spoke slowly, enunciating each
word clearly. ‘Because if you ever lay a hand on me again, I’ll
walk out that door and I won’t come back.’

‘You can’t! You’ve no business talking of
leaving—you belong here. You belong to
me
.’

‘I’m not going to put up with what you did
to me. I won’t let you touch me again.’

‘I’ll do what I like with you,’ he said, his
face a fierce red. ‘You’re mine, woman, and I’ll show you what that
means.’

‘What are you going to do, knock some more
of my teeth out?’ It was dangerous to taunt him, she knew; but she
was beyond fear. He had done his worst to her and she had survived
it; he had no weapons except the strength of his body, and she was
not going to let him use it against her any more. ‘You could only
force me once. If you do I’ll walk out. I mean it, Charlie.’

‘Do you think I’d let you go?’

‘You can’t stop me. You’re not always here
to watch me. It’s not far to Pa’s, I could be over there before
you’d noticed I was gone.’

‘I’d fetch you back—I’d not have you making
a fool of me, running home to your pa.’ He still thought he was
winning, Amy could tell, but her new-found self-assurance was
confusing him.

‘Would you? You’d have to deal with Pa and
the boys first. Pa wanted to bring me home with him when he saw
what you’d done to me—he’d never let you take me back if I asked
him to look after me.’

‘You’ve no right—the law would be on my
side, you know. I’d get the sergeant out here to fetch you
back.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to be made a fool
of. What do you think the town would say when they heard you’d had
to get the policeman to drag your wife home for you? And then I’d
run away again, and you’d have to get Sergeant Riley out again. How
long would you keep it up? How long do you think Sergeant Riley
would keep coming out before he told you to stop bothering
him?’

‘You… you couldn’t.’ Now he was struggling
to hold on to his certainty. ‘What kind of a woman abandons her
children? Eh? What sort of evil bitch runs off and leaves her
bairns?’

‘Leave them? I wouldn’t leave my boys with
you. I’d take them with me.’

‘No!’ He howled the word, fear and fury
mingled. ‘You’re not taking my sons away from me—not my sons! I’ll
not let you take them.’

‘If you force me to run away, then they’ll
come too. You can’t stop me doing that, either. You can’t have them
with you all the time, not every minute of the day. They love going
to see Pa, I’d have no trouble getting them to come with me. And Pa
wouldn’t give his grandsons back to you any more than he’d give
me.’

‘You want to take my sons away from me!’ he
raged.

‘No, I don’t, Charlie,’ Amy said, her voice
calm although she had to raise it to make him hear her. ‘I don’t
want to take the boys off you—they need their father, and I know
you love them, whatever you feel about me. I’ll only take them away
if you make me leave.’

‘I won’t let you,’ he repeated.

‘Otherwise, things can carry on just the
same as before. I’ll keep house for you, I’ll do the same cooking
and cleaning I’ve always done. I’ll do everything I’ve always done.
All except that one thing. Just that one thing.’

‘You’ve no business saying what you will and
won’t do—it’s your duty to do as I say—damn it, you’re my wife!
What about my rights?’ He shouted the question at her.

‘What about mine?’ Amy shouted back,
allowing herself to feel anger at last.

He stared at her blankly. ‘What are you
talking about?’ Amy could see that he truly had no idea what she
meant. ‘For years I’ve fed and clothed you—kept a roof over your
head—what do you mean, going on about rights?’

‘I think you’ve had your money’s worth out
of me.’

But that was too subtle a concept for
Charlie. ‘The rights of the marriage bed—it’s your duty to share my
bed,’ he floundered.

‘I don’t think it is. Not any more. You’ve
made it very clear to me over the years that I don’t… please you
in… in that way.’ Amy fought down the embarrassment she felt in
speaking of such things. ‘And it seems there are women who do.’ She
saw him give a start. ‘I think we’d both be a lot happier if you
stopped trying to force the rights of the marriage bed and just
carried on taking your pleasure where you’ve been taking it for
years—in the whorehouse.’

‘Who told you that?’ Charlie demanded.
‘Who’s been running to you with tales?’ Amy could tell from his
voice that he was struggling to keep up his belligerence in the
face of the jolt she had just given him.

‘You told me yourself. I smelt the whores on
you.’

‘And why shouldn’t I go to the whores? What
pleasure do you think it is mounting you, the nonsense you carry on
with? All that trembling and bawling, and making out you’re too
much the fine lady for me?’

‘Stop doing it, then. Stick to your
whores.’

‘What makes you think you’re so much better
than them? Eh? You bore a bastard to the first man who offered to
tumble you—what does that make you, then?’

‘I’ve never been a whore, Charlie. I didn’t
even know what the word meant till I married you, but you flung it
at me often enough that I took notice of what people say until I’d
figured it out for myself.’

‘So you’re trying to make out that you were
a decent woman when I wed you? That you came to me in the state a
wife should?’

‘Of course I’m not.’ For a moment the vision
of her tiny daughter lying in her arms flashed before Amy, but she
shut it out at once. She had to be strong, not dissolve into tears.
‘Yes, I sinned. I did wrong. But that was before you had any claim
over me. I’ve never wronged you, Charlie. I’ve never sinned against
you.’ Despite her best efforts, she could not keep a catch out of
her voice. ‘I’ve done my best. I’ve tried so hard to please
you.’

‘Well, you haven’t.’

‘No, I know that. So there’s no use trying
any more, is there? I’ll go on doing the things I do seem to be
capable of—you’ve never complained about the way I keep house—and
you use the women who suit you.’

She could see in his face that he knew he
was losing the fight, and that the frustration of knowing it was
making him angrier. ‘It’s not your place to tell me what to
do—there’s more than pleasure in it. I’ve the right to get sons on
my wife—it’s your duty to give me sons.’

‘I’ve given you two strong sons. This isn’t
a big farm, you know—it’ll be hard enough to make it support two
families when the boys are grown.’

‘So you despise my farm, do you? Not good
enough for the fine lady? Not good enough for Jack Leith’s
daughter?’

‘I didn’t say that. All I said was it’s not
big enough for a tribe of sons—don’t do that, Charlie,’ she warned
as he balled his fist.

‘I’ll decide how many sons I can support,
not you. I’ll decide when I’ve enough sons to help me work the
place. Don’t you go telling me you’ll give me no more, bitch.
You’ll give me sons, all right.’

She stared dispassionately at his fist. ‘You
shouldn’t have got rid of the last child, then.’

His face clouded with confusion. ‘What are
you talking about?’

‘The one I was carrying the night you
knocked my teeth out. The one you kicked out of me when I was lying
on the floor.’

He paled visibly at her words. ‘No,’ he
whispered. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were with child?’

‘It’s hard to think clearly when you’re
being beaten like that. Anyway, I didn’t know it myself. I’ve been
with child so much this last year, I can’t tell the signs any more.
I think I’d carried that one a bit longer than some of the others,
though. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost it this time. Maybe you would
have had another son.’ She stabbed the knife in further. ‘But
you’ll never know. Because you killed it. Why should I carry more
babies for you to kill?’

‘Y-you’re lying,’ he stammered, but they
both knew he did not believe his own words.

‘I dragged myself up off the floor and held
on to that chair. That’s when I felt the child coming. There was a
lot of blood. There’s a bloodstain where you’re standing. It’s not
as dark as it was, but you can see it if you look properly. I
haven’t been able to give the floor a good scrub since, not with
the state you left me in. Some of it’s my blood, but most of it’s
from the baby.’

‘It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t
driven me to it, you and your nonsense—you brought it on
yourself.’

‘Did I? Did I ask you to leave me all
bloodied and bruised? Did I ask you to kill our child?’

Charlie gave a roar of rage and frustration.
He raised his fist, and Amy resisted the almost overpowering urge
to cringe away as he swung it.

There was a resounding crack as his fist
hammered into the wall behind her. He stormed from the room,
slamming first the door into the parlour and then the bedroom door.
Amy found herself alone in the kitchen.

Her legs gave way under her, and she sank
heavily into a chair. She realised that she was shaking, but not
with fear. It was exhilaration; the exhilaration of having faced
Charlie and won. He was never going to hurt her again.

When her heart stopped pounding so fiercely
she stood up, leaning on the edge of the table for support. She was
aware of a deep weariness creeping over her now that the immediate
need for strength had passed. She examined with dispassionate
interest the dent Charlie’s fist had left in the wall.
That
could have been my face. A few weeks ago it was
.

She walked slowly into the tiny bedroom that
was now hers, closing the door behind her. When she had undressed
she slipped between the sheets, the touch of the smooth linen like
a caress. She extinguished her candle and felt the darkness of the
room enfolding her in a safe embrace before she fell into a deep,
dreamless sleep.

*

Charlie sat in silence while Amy dished up
his breakfast the next morning. She was about to go and fetch the
boys from their bedroom when he spoke.

‘I think you’re maybe not over that bit of
trouble yet.’

Amy stopped in her tracks, wondering what
was coming next.

‘It might be for the best if you keep to the
back room for a wee bit longer,’ he went on. ‘We’ll speak no more
of what was said last night when you were feeling poorly.’

Pretending I’m sick won’t change things,
Charlie. And I’m never coming back to your bed
. But Amy said
nothing aloud. If he wanted to try and save face with himself by
believing lies about what had gone on between them, let him believe
them. The truth would force itself upon him soon enough.

Later that morning, when Amy had finished
making Charlie’s bed and tidying his clothes away, she opened his
wardrobe and saw her silk dress hanging there beside his suit. It
was time she did something about that, as well as the three drawers
that held the rest of her belongings. There was no need to leave
her things in his room any longer, not now that she had told him
how matters were going to be.