Sentence of Marriage (2 page)

And it had all come crashing down at three o’clock one morning a little over a week ago, when Jack had come out to the kitchen to find Amy fast asleep in front of a pile of ironing, two flatirons dangerously hot on the range.

‘I’m not going to have you working day and night trying to do two jobs,’ her father had said. ‘You’ve got to give up one, and you know which it is.’

Amy had seen her dreams dissolve before her eyes, but Miss Evans had managed to comfort her, assuring Amy that she would do her best to persuade Jack to reconsider when Amy was a little older; perhaps next year, she had said. Amy clung to this promise, and did her best not to let her father see her disappointment. They needed her at home, and it was wrong to be selfish.

Harry drilled a hole in one of the lengths of timber, making a show of very carefully estimating two feet from the end, and took the bottle of gunpowder to put some in the hole. ‘This look all right, Pa?’ he asked. Jack hauled himself to his feet and went to check Harry’s work.

Amy stowed the plates and cloth in her basket. She managed to get a fair distance away before the noise of splitting logs began again.

*

In the winter months Amy was the first person in the house to get up. She rose next morning as soon as a hint of daylight crept into her room. By the time she had dressed, made her bed and brushed her hair, the hills she could glimpse through her window stood out against the pink sky of dawn.

She laid her hairbrush on the dressing table, in front of her little bookshelf. To one side of the shelf stood a photograph in a silver-plated frame. The picture showed a dark-haired woman, Amy’s mother, holding a tiny baby that Amy had been assured was herself at the age of six weeks. The woman was sitting on the verandah of Amy’s house, smiling at the photographer as she held her baby daughter close. Four-year-old Harry stood beside his mother, clutching her skirt and looking dubious, while a young-looking Jack stood on her other side holding six-year-old John by the hand. Jack had an identical photograph on the dressing table in his room.

Amy picked up the photograph and studied it. She had only dim memories of her mother, who had died when Amy was three years old, but they were memories tinged with warmth and affection. She smiled back at the lady in the photograph, replaced it and ran her finger softly along the spines of the row of books that were like old friends to her.

She slipped a black mourning band over her sleeve and went out to the kitchen. The dough she had set by the range the previous evening had risen overnight; she kneaded it and put it into pans, and by the time the range had heated up the bread was ready to go in.

Her father and brothers wandered into the kitchen some time later, attracted by the smell of bacon and eggs. The four of them ate a leisurely breakfast, and the men lingered over second helpings while Amy washed the dishes.

Amy had just gone outside to feed the hens when she saw riders coming up the track. It was her Uncle Arthur, who owned the next farm up the valley, along with her cousin Lizzie and Lizzie’s younger brother Alf.

Arthur slipped from his horse and went to have a chat with Jack, eleven-year-old Alf close at his heels, while Amy held Lizzie’s reins and the girls exchanged news.

‘Have you heard about the whale?’ Lizzie asked. ‘It got washed up on the beach, Alf heard about it at school yesterday. We’re going down to have a look, come with us.’

‘I don’t think I can, Lizzie, I’m busy this morning.’

‘Of course you can, it’ll only take an hour or so. Hop up behind me, you don’t weigh much and Jessie’s strong.’ Lizzie patted the roan mare’s rump.

‘I really can’t. I got a bit behind yesterday—I had to take lunch to the men, and I ended up staying a while with them. I didn’t even get any baking done. Maybe Pa and the boys will go down later and I can go with them.’

‘But I want you to come with me. I tell you what,’ Lizzie said, brightening, ‘if you come now, I’ll give you a hand with your work afterwards. So you can come, can’t you?’

Amy laughed. Lizzie was only eighteen months older than her, but as well as being several inches taller and much more sturdily built, she was a good deal more determined. Lizzie usually got her own way in the end; it generally saved time to go along with her from the beginning. ‘All right, Lizzie, you win.’ She took off her apron and ran back to the kitchen with it before hoisting herself up behind the saddle and putting her arms around her cousin’s waist. ‘What’ll Aunt Edie say about you staying here to help me?’

‘Oh, Ma won’t mind.’ Handling her mother was never a problem for Lizzie.

Arthur and Alf came back and remounted, and they set off down the track at a walk. The sun had climbed above the eastern wall of the valley, promising another bright, clear day. A light breeze ruffled Amy’s hair, and there was still a touch of dew on the grass. It was a fine day for an outing.

The steepest of the hills on both sides of the valley were still bush-clad. Many of the tallest trees had been milled over the years, but scattered among the lower-growing manuka were lofty totara, rimu with their drooping foliage, and the darker leaves of puriri. Where the forest canopy had been removed tree ferns flourished, with an occasional nikau palm among them looking like something from the pictures of tropical islands Amy sometimes saw in her father’s newspapers.

Nearer the house, the slopes had been burned off and sown with grass years before. Shorthorn cattle wandered among the blackened stumps that had survived the burning, with sheep in the steeper paddocks. The farm’s only flat land was in two paddocks edging the creek; here the stumps had been laboriously hauled out and the ground ploughed, so that maize and potatoes could be grown.

They left the farm track and turned on to the road down the valley. Arthur and Alf nudged their horses into a trot, but when Lizzie kicked Jessie into a burst of speed Amy gave a yelp.

‘Lizzie, you can’t trot with me on Jessie’s bare back—it hurts! It doesn’t feel very steady, either.’ So they had to keep to a walk, which meant the other two quickly got ahead of them.

‘Why are you so keen for me to go down with you, anyway?’ Amy asked as they slowly made their way down the road.

‘Well, I’ve hardly had the chance to see you these last few months, you were so busy with that teaching business. And… I just thought we might see some people down there.’

Amy gasped as Jessie made a leap over a rut in the road, jolting her against the horse’s hard spine. ‘What people?’ she asked when she had got her breath back.

‘Oh, just… people,’ Lizzie said vaguely. ‘There’s that grumpy old Charlie Stewart,’ she muttered as they reached the boundary fence. Amy recognised the tall, slightly stooped figure of her father’s neighbour standing close to his gate. ‘Hello, Mr Stewart,’ Lizzie called, sitting up straighter in the saddle to wave. He glared at her; she tossed her head and pressed Jessie into a brisker walk. ‘What a horrible man. Did you see how he just stared at me? He’s not a bit polite.’

Charlie Stewart lived alone on the farm that bordered Jack’s to the north. He seemed to Amy much the same age as her father, and therefore quite an old man, with his long, shaggy beard and sandy-red hair turning grey.

She could remember being frightened of him when she had been younger; he had shouted at her and Lizzie when they had once sneaked over his fence looking for blackberries, and he had complained to her father about the incident. Her father had been amused rather than angry, and her grandmother had thought it so unimportant that she had merely smacked Amy rather than bothering to get out the strap, but Amy could still remember the fury in Mr Stewart’s voice, and the wild look in his eyes as he chased them back across the fence. Now she felt those eyes following her as she bumped along behind Lizzie.

‘Aren’t you scared of him?’ Amy asked, slumping down and trying to make herself inconspicuous. ‘He always looks so fierce. Don’t you remember that time he nearly caught us on his land? I was sure he’d give us a beating if he’d got hold of us.’

‘Humph! My pa would have had something to say to
him
if he had.’

‘That wouldn’t have been much comfort.’

‘Yes, it would. Anyway, who’d be scared of him—sour old man like that.’ Lizzie dismissed Charlie Stewart with a wave of her hand.

A little beyond Mr Stewart’s property was the valley school, set on a pocket of land just big enough for the schoolhouse with its little yard and a small paddock for the horses. It was Saturday, and the school was deserted. Amy gazed at the small wooden building as they rode past, imagining herself working there again. Next year, Miss Evans had said. It did not sound so very long.

There was only one more farm before the valley road met the main road into town. As they went past the Kelly property Amy noticed Lizzie become suddenly alert, straining her gaze up towards the homestead.

‘What are you looking for?’ Amy asked.

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Lizzie, what’s wrong with you this morning? You’re being very secretive.’

‘No I’m not.’

‘Yes you are, and you’re being argumentative as well.’

‘Ooh, what a big word,’ Lizzie teased. ‘Well, all right, maybe I am. I just wondered if they’re both going down to the beach to have a look, and if they’ve left yet.’

‘Who—the Kellys, you mean?’

Lizzie nodded.

‘What difference does it make whether it’s Frank or Ben or both of them?’

‘Well, Ben’s no use,’ said Lizzie. ‘He never even talks to anyone. Frank’s nice, though, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, of course he is.’ Frank was seven years older than Amy; she hadn’t gone to school with him, but saw him during haymaking and at church. He was quiet, but not as unfriendly as his older brother.

‘And they’ve got a good farm, and they live close.’

‘Yes,’ Amy agreed.

‘I just thought I’d like to get to know him a bit better.’

‘Why? Oh!’ Sudden realisation came. ‘You’re after him for a husband!’ Amy’s voice rose in amusement.

‘Shh!’ Lizzie hissed, looking around to see if anyone was listening. They were close to the beach now, and there were several other riders plus a few gigs and buggies about. ‘Now I didn’t say that, did I? I just said I wanted to get to know him a bit better.’

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘I’ve got to think ahead, you know—these things don’t just happen by themselves.’

Amy smiled at Lizzie’s serious tone. ‘So are you going to walk up to him and ask him to marry you?’

Lizzie pursed her lips. ‘I wish I’d left you at home if all you can say is silly things like that.’

‘It wasn’t my idea to come, you know,’ Amy said, bristling a little.

‘I didn’t make you, did I?’

‘Yes, you did actually!’

‘Well, we’re here now. Let’s see if we can find him.’ Lizzie slid from her horse and tied the reins to a convenient tree branch. Amy jumped down and followed a few steps behind as Lizzie stalked off in her purposeful way.

A cluster of about twenty people standing below the high-water mark showed where the beached whale lay. Amy glanced at the other onlookers as they drew closer; she saw old Mr Aitken and his son Matt, whose daughter Bessie had been one of Amy’s little pupils at school.

‘Look,’ Amy whispered to Lizzie, ‘some of those Feenan boys are here.’

‘Trust them. They wouldn’t miss an excuse to butt in where they’re not wanted.’

‘I hope they don’t start a fight,’ Amy said.

The Feenans were a large Irish family that farmed a rough patch of land about two miles west of the valley where Amy lived. They were what Amy’s grandmother had always referred to as ‘a bit muddly’ about their household arrangements; no one was sure just how many of them lived there nor quite how they were related, but they were all Feenans and as far as their neighbours were concerned they all meant trouble. On this occasion they were represented by three boys whose ages appeared to range from about fourteen to eighteen. Amy was relieved the boys stood on the far side of the group, so that she and Lizzie would not have to pass close to them.

The farmers stood around in small knots, chatting idly now that they had seen all they wanted of the whale. Amy caught snatches of conversation as Lizzie threaded her way through the group:

‘Weather’s bad, eh?’ ‘Yes, never seen so much mud—probably still be like this at calving time’ ‘Lord only knows what the maize’ll be like next summer’ ‘Butter price was pretty low this year’ ‘It’ll be worse next season, you mark my words’ ‘Hardly worth bothering’ ‘It’s the bloody government—that Colonial Treasurer Harry bloody Atkinson, he doesn’t care a damn about anywhere but bloody Taranaki’.

Amy hid a smile and wondered, as she so often did, why they carried on if it was really as bad as all that.

The curser, a farmer from closer to town whom Amy recognised as Mr Carr, was nudged in the ribs by his neighbour as the girls walked past. ‘It’s the Leith girls,’ one of the other men said. Mr Carr looked discomforted, though Amy heard him mutter under his breath something about this being ‘no place for women, anyway’. But they were greeted politely enough. ‘Morning, girls,’ the men said in chorus, touching their hats in greeting. Amy smiled and nodded, but Lizzie had seen her quarry and was oblivious.