Sentence of Marriage (21 page)

There were differences, though. This time Susannah went into her sack-like dresses and stopped leaving the house in her fifth month with only minor complaints. And of course this year Thomas was there. Susannah weaned him at six months; when she announced this to Edie, the older woman sighed and agreed.

‘Yes, you’ve got to, really. It’s a bit early for the little fellow, but you’ll need all your strength for the new baby.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ said Susannah. ‘I’d be giving up that unpleasantness anyway, even if I did have the strength to do both. I don’t see why I should put up with it if it’s not going to do me any good.’

Thomas continued to grow and thrive, even without his mother’s grudged milk, and Amy enjoyed playing with him as he became more responsive.

‘Makes me feel young again, having a baby around the place,’ Jack would say as he bounced the child on his knee.

‘It makes me feel old,’ was Susannah’s muttered reply.

There was something different about Susannah this year, Amy thought. She still had tantrums and fits of weeping, but far fewer than when she was carrying Thomas. As her pregnancy wore on, Susannah was more and more inclined to wear an expression of grim determination, as though screwing up her courage to make a difficult decision. Amy decided Susannah was probably frightened again about the birth, even though Aunt Edie had said her stepmother wouldn’t be nervous after she had had one baby.

Amy was confirmed in May that year, when the Bishop made his annual visit to Ruatane. Lizzie had delayed her own confirmation so that the cousins could be confirmed together, which meant Lizzie was the oldest of the ten candidates. Two weeks before confirmation Mrs Leveston, the wife of Ruatane’s Resident Magistrate and the self-appointed arbiter of style for the town, invited the girls of the confirmation class to her house for a Thursday afternoon tea.

‘She thinks she’s giving us wild colonial girls a taste of civilisation,’ Lizzie said, with more truth than she knew. But both girls enjoyed the prospect of an outing and seeing the inside of what was probably the most elegant house in Ruatane.

Arthur dropped the girls off at the Leveston’s house in good time on the appointed day. ‘I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours when I’ve finished in town. Watch yourselves, don’t disgrace the family,’ he said as he drove off.

‘As if we would,’ said Lizzie. She led the way up the drive with a determined stride.

The house was not large, no bigger than Amy’s home, but the garden had a manicured perfection that betrayed the fact that Mr Leveston employed two gardeners. Dotted about the lawn were rose beds, unfortunately without roses at this time of year, but filled with marigolds and violas to give colour. Other beds were planted in lavender, which gave off a sweet scent as the girls walked past, or in tall larkspurs and mignonette with lobelias and alyssum around the edges. A huge lilac tree had pride of place in the centre of the lawn, with several rhododendrons and camellias around it. The gravel drive ran around the edge of the garden, right up to the front door, with a border of petunias all along its length.

When Lizzie rapped on the door it was opened by a maid wearing a dark dress and a white cap and apron. Both girls stared at her, never having seen such a thing as a uniformed servant before. ‘Come through to the drawing room, ladies,’ the maid said, and Amy very nearly looked around to see where the ‘ladies’ were. But she collected herself, and with Lizzie followed the maid a short way down a wide passage then into a room that overlooked the beautiful front garden.

‘You’re the first ones to arrive,’ the maid said. ‘I’ll tell the mistress you’re here,’ she added as she left the room.

‘I told Pa he was bringing us too early—he never takes any notice of me,’ Lizzie grumbled, but Amy hardly heard her. The room was taking her whole attention.

‘Did you ever see such a place,’ Amy said in a voice little above a whisper. ‘It’s just so
elegant
. Look at these things.’ She walked over to the fireplace with its marble surrounds, and looked at herself in the ornate gold-framed mirror that hung above the mantel. An elaborate clock with the figures of young women either side of it and a glass dome over the whole, was in the centre of the mantelpiece, with a heavy silver candlestick on either side. Silver-framed photographs and several porcelain vases shared the rest of the mantelpiece.

Amy turned from the fireplace and looked around the rest of the room, exclaiming over the delicate china figures that sat on a small table around a vase decorated with painted flowers and gold leaf, then studying a painting of a young woman who bore an expression of rapture as she rose from a man’s lap. ‘Isn’t that gorgeous?’ she said at the sight of a magnificent candelabra that hung from the ceiling.

‘Mmm,’ Lizzie said dubiously. ‘It looks nice, but what an awful thing to dust.’

‘Don’t be so
practical
, Lizzie,’ Amy scolded. ‘Oh, look at this beautiful piano!’ She rushed over to the Brinsmead that dominated one corner of the room and ran her fingers lightly over the polished wood. ‘Wouldn’t you just love to have beautiful things like these?’ she asked, turning a glowing face towards her cousin.

‘What’s the point in hankering after things you’re never going to get?’ Lizzie said, in a down-to-earth way Amy found maddening. ‘It only vexes you. Let’s face it, Amy, we’re not from the sort of family that has pianos.’

‘There’s no harm in dreaming, is there?’ The piano drew Amy to it. She raised the lid and laid her fingers very gently on the exposed ivory keys, too softly to make a sound.

‘It’s a lovely instrument, we brought it out from Home,’ came an English-accented voice from close behind her. Amy quickly put the piano lid down, took a step backwards and turned guiltily. Mrs Leveston had entered the room without the girls noticing; despite her plumpness she could move very quietly. ‘Do you play, my dear?’

‘Ah, no, I don’t,’ Amy said, feeling her face reddening. ‘I’ve never learned.’

‘Oh, you should,’ Mrs Leveston said. Her elegant voice and dumpy figure seemed oddly mismatched. ‘Look at those lovely graceful fingers of yours, I’m sure you must be musical.’ She took Amy’s unresisting hand in her own, and turned it over to expose the palm. Amy felt the cream lace at the cuffs of Mrs Leveston’s lilac silk dress brush against her wrist. ‘But look at the state of it,’ the woman exclaimed, seeing Amy’s rough, broken skin. She took the other hand as well and put the guilty palms side by side. ‘You’re not looking after your skin properly, my dear. These hands of yours are spending too much time in water.’

‘Well, there’s the washing, you see,’ Amy said. ‘Especially now we’ve got the baby. And the dishes. And all the scrubbing, of course.’

‘Don’t you have a servant for the rough work?’ Mrs Leveston asked.

‘No, only me,’ Amy said. ‘And Susa… I mean my stepmother,’ she added hastily.

‘Hmm. Well, if you must get them wet all the time, make sure you dry your hands thoroughly. And every night you should rub glycerine and lemon juice into them. That will keep them soft and white. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mrs Leveston, thank you. I’ll try and remember.’

‘Good. Now—’ But Mrs Leveston was interrupted by the maid announcing the arrival of more girls, and any further advice she might have had for Amy was forgotten.

The next two hours passed in a succession of cups of tea, tiny sandwiches and dainty cakes. ‘These things don’t fill you up unless you have half a dozen of everything,’ Lizzie muttered to Amy, but Amy frowned her into silence. Then the visitors were given a tour around the gardens, with Mrs Leveston explaining each tree and shrub to them in great detail.

Arthur tilted his hat politely to Mrs Leveston when he arrived to collect the girls. ‘Good day, ma’am. I hope they’ve behaved themselves?’ he asked, earning a scowl from Lizzie.

‘Oh, they’ve been a pleasure to have,’ Mrs Leveston assured him. She gave the girls a delicate wave as the buggy moved off.

‘It must be wonderful to live in a place like that,’ Amy said dreamily as they jolted along the inland track. ‘All those beautiful things to look at.’

‘Mmm, and nothing to do except give orders and watch other people work,’ said Lizzie.

‘You’ll have to find someone fancier than Frank Kelly to set your cap at if you want to be one of the idle rich,’ Arthur put in from the front of the buggy, startling the girls, who had almost forgotten his presence.

‘Who said I wanted it?’ Lizzie said tartly, and they heard Arthur chuckle to himself.

*

The new baby arrived in August, just as Thomas had the previous year, and to complete the pattern it was another boy, this time given the name George. Susannah did not want a tea party this year, but Edie came to visit, with Lizzie at her heels, when George was a few days old and Susannah was still confined to bed.

‘Another boy,’ Edie said, looking at the tiny figure in his cradle. ‘Jack’ll always have a houseful of sons at this rate.’

Little George started to make a mewling cry. ‘He’s hungry, pass him to me, would you, Edie?’ Susannah said, unbuttoning her nightdress. Edie laid the baby in Susannah’s arms and watched as he began to suckle.

‘Now, you will feed this one for a whole year, won’t you?’ she said. ‘You stopped a bit soon with Thomas. I know you had to, but you should be all right this time.’

‘No,’ Susannah said flatly. ‘I’ll feed him till he’s old enough for ordinary food, that’s all.’

‘But Susannah, you’re sure to have another one next year if you don’t feed him yourself, and you made enough fuss over this one coming so fast.’

‘I’m not going to have any more children.’

‘That’s easy to say,’ Edie laughed. ‘They come along whether you plan them or not—especially if you’re so set on not feeding him.’

‘It didn’t work last time, did it?’ Susannah flung at her. The child stirred in her arms, and she transferred him to her other breast. Susannah’s eyes went to her wardrobe, then back to Edie. ‘My dresses are still hanging up in there, Edie, just like you said they’d be—hanging there getting out-of-date. Well, next winter they’re not going to just be hanging up—I’m going to wear them. I’m not going to be fat and frumpy. I’m not going to have any more babies, and that’s that.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Edie.

Amy and Lizzie left the room unnoticed and went out to the kitchen. ‘What do you think she means about not having any more babies?’ Lizzie asked. ‘Ma doesn’t seem to think she can get out of having them.’

Amy shrugged. ‘How should I know? Susannah seems pretty certain about it.’

*

Even if she had wanted to, Susannah could not accompany Jack on his weekly visits to town for supplies before George was content to be fed less frequently. One Thursday morning in October when Jack had gone to town, Susannah sat in the kitchen, drumming her fingers absently on the table top while Amy prepared lunch. The babies were both asleep in the bedroom; George in his cradle and Thomas in his little bed under the window. Amy glanced at her stepmother from time to time, puzzled at the woman’s strange silence. Susannah’s eyes had an odd, inward-looking expression, as though she were having a silent conversation with herself, and Amy found it disconcerting.

It was a relief when her father arrived home. He was carrying an armload of parcels, plus a letter that he put on the table in front of Susannah. Amy took charge of the food her father had brought home and started to put the things away while Jack sat down beside Susannah.

‘You all right, Susannah? You’re very quiet today,’ he said, putting his hand over hers.

She pushed his hand away and reached for the letter. ‘I’m tired. I’m always tired. Oh, it’s a letter from Mother.’ She roused a little as she opened the letter. ‘Constance has had another daughter,’ she said when she had reached the bottom of the first closely-written page. ‘Of course she has Mother there to help her when she has babies,’ she added bitterly. ‘She doesn’t live at the back of nowhere. She has a nursemaid to look after her children, too.’

‘Well, you’ve got Amy,’ said Jack, and Susannah flashed him a look that would have warned a wiser man into silence. ‘Amy’s better than some stranger.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ Susannah went back to her letter. ‘Oh!’ she said when she had read on a little further. She put the letter down and looked at Jack with a softer expression. ‘Oh, Jack, Mother says James would like to come down and stay with us this summer. Could he? Please? I’d
love
to have him come and stay.’

‘Your young brother, eh?’ Jack said. ‘I don’t see why not, we can always use a bit of extra help over the summer, what with haymaking and everything. He could bunk in with one of the boys.’ He put his arm around Susannah’s shoulders, and she made to push it away, then seemed to change her mind and let it stay there. ‘Do you think it might cheer you up a bit to see him?’ Jack asked.

‘I’m sure it would,’ Susannah said, looking positively happy. Amy tried to remember the last time she had seen Susannah so animated; not since before Thomas was born, she was sure. ‘It’ll be wonderful to hear all the news and catch up on the latest fashions and things. I’ve missed James so much, too, we were always specially close. I’m going to write to Mother straight away to tell her you’ve said James can come.’ She rewarded Jack with a radiant smile, then slipped out from under his arm and went off to the bedroom with the letter to write her reply.