Mud and Gold (73 page)

On his return from the factory next day,
Charlie came into the kitchen and sat down at the table muttering
under his breath. ‘They’re mad, the lot of them,’ he announced.

‘Who is, Charlie?’ Amy asked as she poured
his tea.

‘Those men. The lot of them.’ He took a gulp
of tea, then put the cup down heavily. ‘They’re letting their women
vote!’

He obviously expected her to look surprised,
and Amy did her best. ‘Are they really? What, all the other
men?’

‘Aye, pretty much the lot of them. That
uncle of yours—you know what he came out with? “Edie’s got more
sense than some men I could name.” ’ Amy could imagine her uncle
saying it, and the look he would have cast at Charlie as he made
the remark; Arthur’s sentiment had clearly been lost on
Charlie.

He made a noise of disgust. ‘Henpecked lot
of fools. They’ll regret it,’ he said sententiously. ‘Women should
learn to keep their place. Give them an inch—no good will come of
it.’

‘Have another biscuit,’ Amy said, pushing
the plate towards him. He took two biscuits, then studied her
narrowly.

‘You needn’t think you’re voting.’

‘Oh, no, I can tell you don’t think it’s
right for women,’ Amy said, careful to sound unconcerned. ‘It’s a
shame, though. It’s not fair on you, really.’

‘Eh? What are you blethering about?’

‘Well, it’s not fair when you think about
it. I mean, here you are sticking up for what you think’s right,
and you’re worse off than all the others.’

‘What’s this crap? Talk sense, woman.’

‘Those other men. They’ll tell their wives
who to vote for—Lizzie was saying just the other day she’d asked
Frank how she should vote—so it’s like the husbands will all get
two votes.’ She raised her eyes to look straight into his. ‘But
you’ll only get one.’

Charlie leaned back in his chair and slowly
digested this idea. ‘Two votes each,’ he muttered. ‘The cunning
buggers.’

Amy kept silence, careful not to interrupt
the process of his thoughts. He was still muttering under his
breath when he left the kitchen, but she smiled to herself when she
was safely alone. He had taken the bait.

She had to wait until the eve of the
enrolment deadline to be certain. Charlie rose to put out the lamp,
making Amy hastily bundle up her sewing for the night, then
remarked as he bent over it, ‘I’m taking you into town tomorrow to
sign up for the voting. I’ll not be missing out on my
rights—there’ll be two votes from this farm.’

‘Just as you say, Charlie,’ Amy said,
turning her head aside to hide her smile.

*

On election day Ruatane had a festive air
when Charlie drew the gig to a halt and tied the horse to a
hitching rail a block from the court house. It was no use trying to
find a closer hitching place; the main street was full of people
milling about, coming in and out of the court house or standing
around talking to friends and neighbours.

At first glance Amy thought women far
outnumbered men, but as they worked their way through the crowd she
realised that the numbers were roughly equal. It was simply that
the men, universally dressed in black or grey, were overshadowed by
their womenfolk parading in dresses of every shade, their clothes
in many cases decorated with ribbons in the suffragist colours of
purple, gold and white.

And what an array of dresses there were! Amy
had never seen so many women in the one place all obviously wearing
their best clothes. She did not feel at all out of place in her
wedding dress complete with her special hat.

‘Now, do you think you can remember what I
told you?’ Charlie asked her yet again. ‘You’re to vote for Burton.
Can you remember that?’

‘Yes, I think I can manage,’ Amy said,
trying not to allow her irritation to show. He had catechised her
on the subject all the way into town, making her repeat the name of
his chosen candidate every few minutes.

‘They’ll give you a bit of paper, and you’re
to mark the one you want…’ Charlie looked around disapprovingly at
the women laughing and joking near him. ‘You’ll maybe get in a
muddle, trying to find your way around the bit of paper.’

‘I can read, Charlie,’ Amy said in a tightly
controlled voice. ‘Perhaps they’ve made it easier this time,
anyway, with all the women voting.’

Sarcasm was always lost on Charlie. ‘Aye,
they maybe have.’

‘There’s Frank and Lizzie! Oh, and Harry and
Jane are over there.’

Lizzie spotted Amy at the same time, and
ploughed through the crowd towards them, her new taffeta dress
swishing as she walked. ‘This is fun, eh?’ Lizzie said, eyes
sparkling. ‘All these people! I’ve cast my vote,’ she said, full of
self-importance. ‘You know, just like Mr Seddon said.’ She looked
around at the sea of faces. ‘Nearly everyone’s here. Jane said Aunt
Susannah didn’t want to come, she says it’s not ladylike to vote,
so Jane and Sophie left all the kids with her! I bet that put her
nose out of joint. Lily’s here somewhere, come and see—’

‘You didn’t come here to gossip, you came
for the voting,’ Charlie interrupted. ‘Come on, woman, we’ve not
got the whole day to waste.’ He pushed ahead of Amy, clearing a
path, and she followed in his wake with the children close at her
heels.

Charlie waited for her at the top of the
courthouse steps. ‘That wife of Kelly’s will have put the name out
of your head with her prattling. They’ll all have voted for William
Kelly, I’ll be bound.’

‘Lizzie says she thinks he might be a cousin
of Frank’s father,’ Amy said.

‘Aye, I’ve heard that rubbish. He’s a
Liberal, I know that. I’m not voting for a Liberal—that’s Seddon’s
lot.’

A few steps more and they were inside the
courthouse, where a man stood ready to issue them with papers and
direct them to booths. ‘Now, you’re to vote for Burton. Can you
remember that?’

‘Yes, Charlie. Mr Burton.’

Charlie reached into a pocket of his jacket.
‘I maybe should write it down on a bit of paper for you.’

‘There’s no need for that. Mr Burton, Mr
Burton, Mr Burton. That’s right, isn’t it?’

He rummaged around in the pocket without
success. ‘No, I’ll have to come into the booth with you, see you
don’t get in a muddle.’

‘No!’ She could not keep the indignation out
of her voice, but could see no way of stopping him.

‘Come along, Mr Stewart, don’t block the
door, please,’ said the clerk. ‘Mrs Stewart, will you come this
way?’

Amy made to follow him, with Charlie a step
behind, when the clerk stopped abruptly. ‘No, you wait here,
please,’ he told an astonished Charlie. ‘Your wife must go into the
booth by herself, then you can go in and cast your own vote.’

‘I’m going to see she doesn’t get in a
muddle,’ Charlie said indignantly.

‘No, you’re not, Mr Stewart,’ the clerk
said. ‘You’re not the first man to make a fuss about it today,
either.’ He went on before Charlie had a chance to interrupt. ‘No,
I’m sorry, it’s the law. Either Mrs Stewart goes in that booth by
herself or she doesn’t vote.’ He stood with arms folded and one
foot tapping the floor lightly while he waited for Charlie to make
his decision.

‘All right, she can go in by herself,’
Charlie allowed. He turned to Amy. ‘Now, have you got the name
sorted out?’

‘Mr Burton,’ Amy said one last time. She
smiled at the clerk as she took the paper he held out, then strode
into the booth, leaving Charlie with the two boys.

What had Mr Seddon said? She closed her eyes
for a moment to recall the Prime Minister’s words that she had read
in one of Charlie’s newspapers.

‘A great power has been given to women with
the granting of the vote. Let she who has a husband, whom she loves
and respects, be guided by that husband.’

Loves and respects. But I don’t. So that
means I can please myself
.

With a bold stroke she marked her choice:
William Kelly.

November – December 1893

From soon after the time Malcolm started
school, Amy had had to accept that he was not going to be much of a
scholar. To Malcolm school was something that got in the way of
what he wanted to do, and occasionally he decided it was worth
arguing over whether or not he had to go at all. He generally had
the sense to keep these arguments between himself and Amy; on the
few occasions he was foolish enough to ask his father why he had to
waste time going to school, he usually received a clip over the ear
and was sent packing. Charlie kept the boys home from school
whenever he decided he needed them on the farm, but teachers at
country schools were used to such absences.

With Malcolm’s attitude to women already set
in a mould of disdain, Amy had hoped that the teacher who replaced
Lily might be a man. But when term had started the previous year,
yet another woman had been appointed.

The new teacher, Miss Metcalf, was well over
forty, grim-faced, and built on sturdy lines. As soon as they heard
that another woman teacher had arrived, Frank had teased Lizzie
that she would have the Education Board on her back if she married
off another of their teachers, forcing them to find a replacement
again, but one look at Miss Metcalf convinced them both of the
folly of such an idea.

‘You’d never talk Alf into taking her,’
Frank remarked.

‘The very idea! She must be nearly as old as
Ma.’

‘And with a face that would sour milk.’

‘Mmm. No wonder she’s never found a husband.
Honestly, some women have no idea.’

With Lizzie’s help withheld, it seemed that
Miss Metcalf was doomed to spinsterhood, and that the pupils of the
Waituhi School were doomed to having her as their teacher. She was
as stern as her appearance suggested, and her pupils learned
belatedly how lucky they had been in Lily. Miss Metcalf had a
strong right arm, and she exercised it several times a day wielding
a strap on any children who stepped out of line.

With such a daunting personage, David’s
first day at school had been far more alarming than Malcolm’s. Amy
had taken him down that morning while Malcolm rode on ahead;
parting with her little boy for the day had given her a pang. David
arrived home that afternoon, clinging around Malcolm’s waist on
Brownie. Dried tears made two trails down his grubby face, and his
right hand bore a red welt.

‘Davie! What happened, darling? Did you get
in trouble?’ Amy had asked.

Malcolm had volunteered the explanation. ‘He
bawled, and that grumpy old Miss Metcalf gave him the strap. She
was wild!’

‘I wanted to stay with you, Mama,’ David had
said, his eyes wide with the memory of his frightening day. ‘The
teacher growled me. Everyone was singing a song, but I didn’t know
how to sing it, and I wanted to see you, and I cried. She said I
was being a baby, and she hit me with the strap. She’s
horrible.’

‘School’s stupid,’ Malcolm had chimed
in.

‘But lunch-time was good,’ David had said,
brightening visibly. ‘I went and played in the bush with all the
other boys. It was fun.’ It was also, Amy was sure, how he had got
his face and clothes so dirty. ‘Then I wanted to come home, and I
cried again. The teacher hit me again. See my hand?’

Amy had kissed the grubby little paw and
comforted David with milk and biscuits, and had tried to explain to
him that school had more to offer than day-long torture sessions
interrupted by running around in the bush for an hour.

But David was by nature eager to please. He
had now been at school a little over a year, and lunch-times were
still the high point of his day, but he generally got the strap
only when Miss Metcalf decided to punish the entire classroom of
children for some unruliness. As far as schoolwork went, David
seemed to be keeping up with the other children of around his
age.

It was Malcolm who worried her. Whenever Amy
tried to quiz him on how he was getting on at school he brushed her
aside. But she could see no sign that he was making any progress at
all, and from the occasional muttered complaint he let slip she
knew he was regularly being punished for getting his work
wrong.

Malcolm never referred to any lessons at
school. The only things he spoke of were the lunch-time escapades
in the bush and, just occasionally, some mischief that the bigger
boys had got up to. The older boys figured frequently in his
after-school conversation, with the name of Des Feenan, the main
actor of the ink-throwing incident, often coming up, always in
tones of admiration.

As far as Amy was concerned, Feenans meant
trouble. She could never hear the name without remembering the
fight at the hay dance and what had happened after it. Her whole
life had been shaped into its present mould by that night.

But she knew that forbidding Malcolm to
spend time with Des at school would only give the older boy more
glamour in his eyes. Malcolm did not usually take any notice of her
forbiddings, other than as something to rebel against.

Charlie seemed never to have wondered what
progress Malcolm might be making at school; he apparently took for
granted that his son was learning whatever he needed to. The
reality had to be forced upon him.

The day of reckoning came at the end of the
school year, when the district inspector had made his annual visit
to examine children for entry to the next Standard. Now that
Malcolm was in Standard One, for the first time he had to face an
examination by the inspector, and all Amy’s fears on his behalf
proved to be justified.

Charlie was thunderstruck when he received a
note saying that Malcolm would not be advancing to Standard Two in
1894 because he had failed the examination.

‘There’s been a mistake,’ was his first
response. ‘That teacher’s got the boy muddled with some other
lad.’