Sentence of Marriage (11 page)

‘Of course I don’t.’ Susannah sat down at the table. ‘I think it’s time I told you just what I do want from you—your father seems to think it’s my problem to get on with you. Stop that ironing for a minute and listen to me.’

Amy put the iron on the range and sat down herself.

‘I’m not your mother. But I
do
want you to show me respect. I expect you to help me around the house—
help
me, I said, don’t pretend it’s your kitchen all the time and you’re only suffering me.’

‘I don’t do that—’

‘Don’t interrupt. You’ve been spoiled—your father’s “dear little girl” and such nonsense. Well, you’re not my dear little girl, but I’m stuck here and you’re stuck with me. We’ll get on well enough if you remember that this is
my
house now, not yours. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t think I won’t tell your father, either, if you play up for me. And don’t ask that girl over here too often. Now, just to show you I’m
not
lazy—’

‘I didn’t say that!’ Amy protested.

Susannah continued as if she had not spoken. ‘I’ll do the ironing, and you can help me with it.’

When Jack came in for lunch he looked at the two of them working together and beamed in obvious relief. ‘Now that’s a nice sight—mother and daughter working together. That’s better than fighting all the time, isn’t it?’

Susannah smiled sweetly at him. ‘Of course it is, dear. We’re getting on just fine, aren’t we, Amy?’

‘Yes,
Ma
,’ Amy said.

December 1881 – February 1882

December wore on towards the end of the year without Amy and Susannah having any more serious disagreements. When Amy paid her promised visit to an anxious Lizzie the week after the rooster incident, she was able to reassure her cousin.

‘No, she’s not being awful to me. We don’t talk to each other very much, no more than we have to, but that saves fights, anyway. She’s sleeping in later in the morning, too.’

‘Is she bossing you around?’ Lizzie asked suspiciously.

‘I suppose she is, but it keeps her happy. Lately she’s started doing these deep sighs all the time and saying how tired she is, but she seems more annoyed with Pa than me. She gives him such pained looks, as though he’s meant to feel guilty.’

‘Does he tell her off?’

Amy frowned. ‘No, and he doesn’t look guilty, either, that’s the strange thing. Most of the time he just smiles when she does it, and gives her a pat on the shoulder.’

‘He’s just humouring her—I bet she nags him when no one’s around.’

‘Maybe. But he looks, well, sort of proud when he does it.’

‘Ahh,’ Lizzie said very knowingly. ‘Looks proud, eh? I see.’

‘What are you going on about, Lizzie?’

‘Oh… you’ll find out,’ Lizzie said, looking smug. Amy let the subject drop; she was just grateful that her father could cope with Susannah’s moods so calmly.

By the New Year, though, she could see that her father was starting to find it wearing.

‘It’s so tiring to work in the heat of this horrible kitchen,’ Susannah complained one afternoon.

Jack smiled indulgently. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, patting Susannah’s arm. But instead of looking soothed she pushed his hand away.

‘You don’t care if I make myself ill working in this heat!’

‘Of course I care.’

‘Why don’t you do something about it, then?’

Jack looked bemused. ‘I don’t rightly know what I can do about it—January’s a hot month, that’s all. You could have a lie-down in the afternoon, I suppose.’

‘Yes, have a lie-down,’ Amy put in, trying to rescue her father. ‘I can finish getting dinner ready.’

Susannah rounded on Amy. ‘Don’t tell me what to do! And don’t you encourage her,’ she snapped at Jack.

‘She’s only trying to help,’ said Jack.

‘Humph! She’s always trying to help, or so she says. And you’re always taking her part against me.’

‘No I’m not—hey, Susie… Susannah, come back!’ But Susannah had stalked out of the room, and they left her alone to have the lie-down of which the suggestion had made her so angry.

*

Amy was becoming used to accepting instructions from Susannah in what she had thought of as her own kitchen, and she thought she took the directions meekly enough. Susannah, however, complained frequently to Jack of what she considered insolence.

‘She’s cheeky to me,’ she said to Jack one evening in bed. Earlier that day Amy had tried to explain to her that she must be sure to cover the dish of soup she had left on the sideboard, so the horrible huhu beetles wouldn’t fall in it.

‘What did she say?’ Jack asked with a sigh. He knew what was coming.

‘It’s not so much
what
she says, it’s how she says it. She puts on a very superior air with me. It’s not right in a child her age. You should correct her.’

‘I can’t very well growl at her just for having the wrong tone of voice, can I?’

‘Humph!’ said Susannah. ‘You’ve been too soft on that girl, and that’s why she’s a burden to me now. It’s very wearying, being crossed all the time. As if I didn’t have enough to put up with…’ Her eyes filled with tears, and Jack reluctantly promised to ‘have a word with the girl’.

Having ‘a word with the girl’ meant that next day he contrived to find Amy when she was alone outside.

Amy smiled as he approached, pleased to see him away from her stepmother, but the moment he spoke her happy mood evaporated.

‘Susa… your ma’s not too happy with you, Amy.’

‘What’s she saying about me?’

‘She says you don’t show her proper respect.’ He held up a hand to silence her when Amy tried to protest. ‘Now, Amy, don’t argue with me. It’s not easy for Susannah, you know. She’s had to give up a lot of her comforts, coming here to live. So the least we can do is try and make it a bit pleasanter for her, isn’t it?’

I didn’t make her come, did I?
But all Amy said aloud was, ‘I don’t mean to be… disrespectful, Pa. It’s just that everything I say seems to annoy her.’

‘Just try a bit harder, then. Make it a bit easier for me, too, girl, for pity’s sake.’

Amy saw the weariness and strain in his face. She slipped her hand into his. ‘I’m sorry, Pa. I
will
try not to annoy her.’

‘You’re a good girl.’ The smile he gave her made Amy even more determined to do her best.

*

She did try, but it seemed she couldn’t do anything right. If she said nothing she was sullen, and if it meant the food didn’t turn out properly she had done it on purpose; if she did try to correct Susannah she was being cheeky. On the whole it seemed safer to be thought sullen.

On a fiercely hot Thursday afternoon in February, Amy and Susannah were working together in the kitchen when there was a knock at the door.

‘Run and answer that,’ Susannah said, taking off her apron in anticipation of a visitor. Lizzie would not have bothered to knock. Amy found to her surprise that her old teacher, Miss Evans was at the door. She showed her in.

Miss Evans was in her thirties, small and stocky, with a round face framed by brown hair pulled back rather severely from her forehead. The stern effect was softened by her bright eyes, which were turned on Susannah in a friendly smile.

‘How do you do, Mrs Leith?’ she said. ‘We’ve been introduced in town, I believe, but I’m afraid I haven’t had the chance to call on you until now—I’m Ruth Evans.’

‘How nice of you to drop in,’ Susannah said, with a somewhat glassy smile. ‘Yes, of course, you’re the school teacher. Won’t you have a cup of tea with me? Amy, bring a tray into the parlour, then you can carry on out here.’

‘I think Amy should join us,’ Miss Evans said. Susannah looked at her in surprise.

‘The girl’s busy out here, and I hardly think we need her with us.’

‘But it’s Amy I want to talk about,’ Miss Evans said, and Amy felt a sudden leap of her heart, followed by a constriction that was almost painful.
No
, she cried silently.
Don’t even try, Miss Evans—not with Susannah. She’ll never understand
. She tried to catch Miss Evans’ eye, but she and Susannah had locked gazes. Miss Evans was the first to break the silence.

‘Now that there’s
another,
’ and she stressed the word in a way that made Amy want to kiss her, ‘woman in the house, Mrs Leith, I imagine Amy has a little more time. Are you aware that she was intending to train as a teacher under me? She started to, but her responsibilities at home were too heavy at that stage. I think it’s time she came back to me.’

Susannah’s expression showed that Miss Evans had abruptly changed from being a break in the monotony of her day into an irritation. ‘My husband told me about that nonsense of Amy’s.’ Amy felt a rush of anger. ‘He let her do it for a while because she whined at him—he spoils her dreadfully, I’m afraid. But I need her in the house—she is some help to me,’ she finished in an injured tone.

There was a few moments’ silence. ‘So you refuse?’ Miss Evans asked.

‘I’m afraid I must. I’m sure you can find some other little girl to wash the boards for you, or whatever she did. I’m quite capable of teaching Amy all she’s ever going to need. I do expect her to marry eventually, of course.’ Amy cringed with embarrassment.

‘In that case,’ said Miss Evans, obviously holding her tongue with difficulty, ‘I won’t take any more of your time. Good day, Mrs Leith.’ She turned to go.

‘Oh, won’t you take tea with me?’ Susannah asked.

‘No, thank you. Perhaps another day.’ She walked out the door.

‘Miss Evans!’ Amy cried in dismay, and made to follow her.

‘Where do you think you’re going, Miss?’ Susannah called sharply. Amy turned to her angrily.

‘You were so rude to Miss Evans! I just want to apologise to her.’

‘You stay just where you are. What right does she have to come here and say what you should or shouldn’t be doing with your time? That’s up to me, not her.’

‘She just wants to help me!’

‘Help you be like her, you mean,’ Susannah said with a sneer. ‘You should be thanking me for rescuing you from her. Do you want to be a dried up old spinster like her?’

Amy stared at her in fury. She clenched and unclenched her fists, trying to control herself, then her anger boiled over.

‘You’d know all about that,’ she spat at Susannah, who stared at her in shock. ‘Dried up old spinster yourself! Had to take what you could get, didn’t you?’

She turned and rushed out of the house. Miss Evans’ little gig was already disappearing down the road, too far away for Amy to follow. She heard Susannah call her name as she ran, half-blinded with tears, until she was around the hill and out of sight of the house in a small grove of trees. She flung herself down on the ground and gave way to racking sobs of anger and disappointment.

It was an hour later by the time she had composed herself enough to return to the house and face the consequences of her outburst, and with a sinking heart she recognised her father’s boots outside the kitchen door. For a moment she was tempted to slip away again and hide, but she knew it would be more sensible to get it over with. She steeled herself and walked into the house.

Jack was in the kitchen with Susannah. He turned a troubled face towards Amy as she walked in, and she felt a stab of guilt.

‘There, you see if she can deny it!’ Susannah said to him in a passion. ‘She abused me to my face—called me names I wouldn’t repeat in front of you—then ran off and left me to do everything by myself—all because I wouldn’t let her have her own way about that teaching nonsense. Do I have to put up with that? Or are you going to do something about it?’ Her eyes glittered dangerously.

Jack sighed. ‘Is this true, Amy?’

Amy looked at her father, at Susannah’s wild-eyed face, then back to her father. She thought of the things Susannah had said, and she felt angry all over again. But it would be too hard to try and make her father understand just how much Susannah had hurt her, especially when she was standing full in the glare of Susannah’s vengeful gaze.

‘Yes, Pa, it’s true. I did say…’ she realised abruptly just how insulting to her father what she had said was, ‘bad things to her. And I ran away, and I stayed away for a long time,’ she added, not wanting to spare herself any blame she might deserve.

‘You see!’ Susannah said in triumph. ‘She doesn’t even try to deny it.’

‘At least she’s honest about it,’ Jack said in a heavy voice. ‘Go to your room, Amy. I’ll be along to see you shortly.’ Amy went, a feeling of unease joining the hurt and anger.

‘What are you going to do to her?’ Susannah demanded, sounding almost hysterical.

‘I’m going to do what you want me to,’ Amy heard her father say as she left the room.

She sat on her bed waiting for her father. It seemed a long time before he came, quite long enough for her to ponder what he had meant by his last words, though in fact it was only a few minutes until he walked into the room and shut the door behind him. He stood with his hands behind his back, looking at Amy in silence for several moments before speaking.