Mud and Gold (8 page)

When Ben returned he wandered into the
kitchen, then stood and looked aghast at the scene. All the dishes
had been washed and stacked, the table and bench wiped down, and
Frank was attacking the stubborn dried mud on the floor with a
stiff broom.

‘I thought you said that woman of yours was
going to do the work,’ Ben said indignantly.

‘She is—of course she is,’ Frank assured
him. ‘She’ll keep the place really nice. But it’s not fair to
expect her to clean up all this mess, is it?’

‘Why not?’

‘Well… it’s just not. It’s really old dirt,
Ben. I can’t remember the last time we cleaned this kitchen.’

‘It was clean enough before.’ Ben shook his
head in disgust. ‘You make me sick, you know that? Mooning around
over the first lot of skirts you ever noticed.’

‘All right, shut up about it. You’ll like
Lizzie once you get to know her.’

‘I never thought you were that stupid.
You’re going to regret it one day, you know. You just remember, I
warned you not to bring a woman into the house.’

‘I won’t need to remember. You’ll keep
telling me.’

‘No I won’t,’ Ben said. ‘You’ll never hear
anything about it from me after tomorrow.’

Frank found that hard to believe, but let it
pass. ‘Hey, Ben,’ he said cautiously, ‘I sort of wondered…’ He
stopped himself. Why on earth was he nervous about making a
perfectly reasonable request of his own brother, when a few days
before he had managed to ask his future father-in-law for the most
intimate advice possible?

‘I want me and Lizzie to have Ma and Pa’s
old room,’ he began again boldly. ‘I think Lizzie should have the
best bedroom. Do you mind?’

‘I don’t care a damn,’ Ben said. ‘Just as
long as you keep her out of my room—even that doesn’t matter, come
to think of it. Not after tomorrow.’

Ben was beginning to sound mysterious.
Perhaps he was just trying to be annoying. ‘Lizzie won’t go in your
room, Ben—not unless you want her to make your bed or something.
But you’re still the oldest. If you get married, you can have the
good bedroom and Lizzie and me will move out of it.’

‘Huh! I’ll never be that bloody stupid—no
woman’s ever going to get her claws into me.’

‘Please yourself, Ben.’

Frank suspected that the parlour would start
being used a lot more once Lizzie arrived. He opened its windows
and waved a cloth around the furniture, raising clouds of dust.
That looked good enough, he decided, as he made his way out of the
room in a fit of coughing. He couldn’t possibly get all the dust
off the mantelpiece and tables; much of it seemed to have set in
place.

He opened the window in the front bedroom
and gave its furniture the same cursory attention the parlour’s had
received, but when he shook the mattresses they made so much dust
that his work was undone at once. He dragged the mattresses out to
the verandah, where they could have a good airing. After all, the
bed had not been slept in for years.

That afternoon Frank hunted out clean sheets
and made up the bed. With its pretty blue coverlet, the brass
bedstead looked inviting. Frank could picture his mother propped up
against the pillows, smiling at him. She had often let him sneak in
to have a cuddle in the morning, while Frank was still too young to
go off with his father and Ben. In the last few years of her life
she had had to spend more and more time in that bed, and in her
final months she had been too weak to get out of it at all.

But after tomorrow it wouldn’t be his mother
smiling up at him from the pillows. It would be Lizzie. At least he
hoped she would be smiling; that would depend on how good a job he
made of things.

Frank sighed. He would do his best, and that
was all he could do. He ran through his scraps of information and
made his plans. Tomorrow morning he would leave a clean nightshirt
under the pillow; no, he would leave it in his own bedroom. Lizzie
might be shy the first night; Frank was quite sure he would be. He
would let her get undressed in private.

He hoped Ben would stay out late the night
of the wedding; either that or go to bed very early. Despite
Arthur’s comments about not wasting time, Frank had decided it
would be a good idea for him and Lizzie to share a cup of tea
before they went to bed, and he was sure Ben’s presence at the
table would do nothing to help them relax.

After a nice, quiet supper together, he
would suggest that Lizzie get ready for bed while he got undressed
in his old room. When she was ready, he would join her in the
bedroom; in the bed, in fact. Then what? Put out the lamp, of
course; neither of them was going to want to be seen. Cuddling in
the dark would be fun, and he knew Lizzie would let him fondle
anything he liked once they were safely married.

His step-by-step plan gave Frank a small
amount of confidence. Now all he had to do was pray that by the
time his knowledge ran out, at the cuddling stage, ‘Doing what
comes naturally’ would have taken over. He smiled at the thought of
Lizzie’s body snuggling up against his. Even if he couldn’t figure
it all out at first, they were going to have some good cuddles.

*

The day of Lizzie and Frank’s wedding dawned
beautifully clear and sunny. After breakfast Amy timidly asked
permission to go to her uncle’s house in time to help Lizzie get
ready. To her relief, Charlie gave his consent with nothing more
than an admonition to ‘Behave yourself’. She put the slight feeling
of nausea with which she had woken down to fear that Charlie might
have refused her request.

Amy walked up the road wearing a faded print
frock and carrying her good dress and beautiful hat; she had
decided the occasion was special enough to take the hat from its
shelf. She felt like a child let out of school on the first day of
the holidays as she revelled in the luxury of being alone. Apart
from the ill-fated visit to Susannah just after her marriage, and a
hurried second visit to return her borrowings, it was the first
time she had left Charlie’s farm by herself in the two months since
her wedding.

Once she had rounded a bend in the road and
Charlie’s property was out of sight, Amy managed to shake off an
uneasy sense of being watched. She looked around her at the beauty
of the bush. It was as if she had not seen it for years, and she
almost felt like giving a little skip as she went along. The long
walk to Arthur’s farm did not seem weary; it was like a pleasant
Sunday stroll. Even the mild churning in her stomach failed to
lower her spirits.

When she got to the farm, Bill and Alf were
busy setting out all the chairs the Leiths owned or had been able
to borrow on the lawn in front of the verandah. Amy waved to them
as she went into the house and sought out Lizzie.

Lizzie and her mother had been up from first
light, putting the finishing touches to the wedding breakfast then
preparing Lizzie for display. Amy let out a gasp when she saw her.
All the romantic notions she and Lizzie had talked about as
children, of brides glowing with joy on their wedding days, were
made real in Lizzie. The round, cheerful face had taken on a
radiance that lifted it beyond ordinary prettiness and into
something Amy supposed must be beauty. She had never seen anyone
looking so happy.

Lizzie was standing in the parlour beside a
table groaning under its load. The centrepiece was a three-tier
wedding cake surrounded by vases of flowers, and Lizzie looked like
the cake come to life. Her gown was of pale pink satin stitched
into a mass of gathers and ruffles. The bodice had tiny pin-tucks
either side of a row of ivory buttons, and was edged with cream
lace. The same lace made a frill around the neck and cuffs, and the
sleeves were smocked above the elbows. She had a puffed train over
her bustle and spilling around her feet, on which she wore white
satin shoes.

‘Amy, you’ve got nimble fingers, help me
with this blessed thing,’ Edie asked, struggling with Lizzie’s
veil. Amy helped her secure it to Lizzie’s hair with pins before
they placed a wreath of orange blossom over the tulle.

‘Doesn’t she look fine?’ Edie said, beaming
all over her broad, good-natured face as she and Amy stood back to
admire their handiwork.

‘Lovely. Just lovely,’ Amy agreed.

Edie clucked in alarm when the mantel clock
struck nine. The two girls sent her off to finish her own toilette.
Amy turned back to Lizzie, and stood drinking in the sight.

‘You look beautiful.’ She gave Lizzie a
careful hug, anxious not to disturb any of her finery. ‘Frank is a
very lucky man.’

‘I’ll make sure he knows it, don’t you
worry.’ Lizzie studied her, and Amy instinctively shied away from
the inspection. ‘I haven’t seen you much lately. I’ve really missed
you since you got married. But, you know, there’s been all this
stuff to do, getting ready for the wedding… are you well, Amy?’

Amy felt her face take on a closed
expression, and she replied more sharply than she had intended.

‘Quite well enough, thank you. There’s no
need to worry about me.’

‘You look so tired—you’ve got shadows under
your eyes, and I think you’ve lost a bit of weight. Your face looks
sort of drawn. Haven’t you been sleeping well?’

‘A husband takes a bit of getting used to,
you’ll find.’ Amy attempted a laugh, but failed. ‘There’s a lot to
get used to with a new house, too.’
Washing clothes by the
creek. Hauling wet washing up the hill. Dragging water all the way
from the well
.

‘Is he treating you all right?’

Amy gave a tired sigh. ‘He’s my husband. He
can do whatever he likes. I try to please him, and sometimes I get
it right. I’ll get better at it.’

‘How did you get this?’ Lizzie asked,
fingering the fading purple bruise on Amy’s cheek.

‘That’s from not getting it right,’ Amy
snapped, pushing Lizzie’s hand away. ‘What do you want, Lizzie—do
you want me to burst out crying and tell you that you were right, I
shouldn’t have done it? I’ve made my bed, and I’m the one who has
to lie in it.’
I have to lie in that bed every night and wonder
if he’ll hurt me, or if he’ll just start snoring
. ‘You’re the
one who was always so keen on getting married, anyway. Don’t you
like what you see of the real thing? Should I tell
you
to
back out of it while you still can?’

She regretted her last words at once, but
Lizzie ignored them. She put an arm around Amy and held her close.
Dry sobs racked Amy, but she would not allow herself the relief of
tears. Not tears on a wedding morning; her grandmother had always
said that was terribly bad luck.

‘You’re right,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m being an
interfering busybody and I should learn to keep my mouth shut. But
I do love you, and I hate to see you unhappy. I
hate
to
think of him hurting you. If I wasn’t practising keeping my mouth
shut…’

Amy recovered herself and gave Lizzie a
quick kiss on the cheek. ‘I wouldn’t have you any other way,’ she
said, managing a smile. ‘But you mustn’t worry about me on your
special day. I brought it all on myself, you know, it’s no good
complaining now. I’ll be all right, really I will. I’m just a bit
tired, and I’m still not very good at pleasing Charlie. Now, let’s
finish getting you ready! Where’s your bouquet?’

‘In my bedroom. You’d better get changed,
too, come on.’

Amy put on her pretty dress and Lizzie
helped pin on her hat. Amy had to clench her teeth to avoid crying
out when Lizzie’s hand knocked against the side of her head where
Charlie had hit her, but Lizzie didn’t seem to notice.

Amy carried Lizzie’s huge bouquet out to the
parlour for her. They fussed about with the flowers, Amy twitched
at the veil and train, and by the time Lizzie’s mother came
bustling back out of her bedroom Lizzie was ready.

‘Now what do I do, Ma?’ Lizzie asked. ‘I’ve
got ready too early! I can’t even sit down, can I?’

‘No, you’ll crease your dress,’ Edie agreed.
‘Oh, I don’t know, walk around the room or something. Don’t walk
too much, though, you’ll disturb your veil.’

‘Ma!’ Lizzie complained. She took small,
mincing steps around the room while Amy helped her aunt carry even
more food out from the kitchen.

Amy delighted in working with her aunt. It
was easy to pretend she was a little girl again and staying with
Lizzie; easy to smile back when Edie beamed at her. Even the
uncomfortable feeling in her stomach was forgotten as she scurried
about. When the tables in the parlour were hopelessly full, Amy and
Edie left the remaining food in the kitchen and collapsed onto a
couch. Lizzie stood in front of the mantelpiece and tried to glare
balefully at them, but her glow of happiness defeated any attempt
at looking resentful.

Amy heard her uncle come in. When he had
changed into his best suit he joined them in the parlour.

‘You look good, girl,’ he said, gazing
proudly at Lizzie. ‘You look really good. So you should—that dress
cost a fortune! That dressmaker saw you and your ma coming.’

He turned to Amy, and she felt shy. Her
uncle had always been like a second father to her, but she knew he
had disapproved of her ever since her disgrace. Today all that
seemed to be forgotten, and he smiled affectionately at her. ‘At
least you didn’t bankrupt your pa with your wedding, eh, Amy? I’ve
just about had to mortgage the place to pay for all this.’ He
patted Amy on the shoulder. ‘And you beat her to it! For all her
chasing after Frank, you got a husband first.’ Amy knew he meant it
kindly. She managed to smile back at him.

Arthur sat on the couch beside Edie and gave
his wife a squeeze. ‘Brings back a few memories, eh, Edie?’ Edie
giggled like a girl. ‘Now we’ve got to sit around and wait for
everyone to arrive. Don’t worry, Lizzie, if Frank doesn’t turn up
I’ll go looking for him. I’d better make sure I get rid of you
after spending all this money!’