Settling the Account (26 page)

Amy had long since given up cringing over
Charlie’s disrespectful remarks about the Queen. She sometimes
worried that her boys might repeat one of them in front of a more
loyal audience, but she knew better than to try rebuking Charlie.
‘It’s to do with land, isn’t it? I read something about it a little
while ago. They’ve got diamond mines there, and—’

‘That’s enough of your prattle,’ Charlie cut
in. ‘What would you know about it? You keep to your pots and pans,
woman, that’s the place for you. That’s the stupidest thing Seddon
ever did, giving women the vote,’ he said sententiously. ‘Makes
them think they’re as good as men. Seddon’s a bloody fool, and I’ve
always said it. Still, what can you expect? He’s an Englishman.’ He
spat out the word as if it was a term of abuse, which in Charlie’s
mouth it usually was.

‘They haven’t given women the vote in
England yet,’ Amy pointed out, indulging in a rare jibe.

‘It’s a bloody wonder,’ was the best
response Charlie could manage. ‘You remember that, boy,’ he said,
turning his attention to Malcolm. ‘Watch out for Englishmen.
They’re land grabbers and thieves, the lot of them.’

Malcolm grunted in response, toying idly
with his fork and keeping his eyes fixed on his plate. He did not
often speak at the table, even now that he had permission to.

Both boys avoided speaking to their father;
the difference was that Malcolm occasionally found himself unable
to resist uttering some complaint or argument. David had the
advantage of being away at school much of the day; now that Malcolm
had left school, he and his father were thrust into one another’s
company through most of the long hours of daylight.

‘They took the land and murdered good Scots,
and now they want to send good colonial boys off to fight their war
in Africa,’ Charlie said. ‘Send New Zealand boys to get slaughtered
instead of their own.’

Malcolm interrupted his father’s
pontification. ‘Can I go in to town this afternoon?’

‘No, you can’t,’ Charlie said, stabbing at
the pat of butter and smearing a lump on his bread.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I bloody say so!’

Their eyes met across the table. Amy gave a
shudder at the animosity in their mutual glare. So alike, her
husband and her son, and so capable of arousing one another’s fury.
If she did not know them both so painfully well she would think
they hated each other; Malcolm believed it, she knew. There were
still sparks, rarer all the time and invisible to anyone but Amy;
still tiny signs that Malcolm craved his father’s approval. Another
year or two and even those would be gone.

‘Would you like some jam, Charlie?’ Amy
asked, anxious to break that hostile locking of eyes. She pushed
the open jar until it nudged against his hand.

‘No need to shove it at me like that,’
Charlie grumbled, but it had the desired effect. He grabbed at the
jar and spread a thick layer of jam on his bread, and by the time
he turned his attention back to Malcolm his glare had lost much of
its ferocity.

‘You needn’t think I’m letting you go out
when you haven’t done your work properly,’ Charlie said.

‘What’d I do wrong now?’ Malcolm asked.

‘That bottom paddock you were working in
this morning. You did a shoddy job planting those potatoes—I’ll be
lucky if half of them sprout, chucked in the furrows any old way
like that.’

‘Did my best,’ Malcolm muttered. He shot a
resentful glance at Charlie, then dropped his gaze to the
table.

‘Your best,’ Charlie scoffed. ‘If that’s
your best you’ll have to wake your ideas up, boy. You can do the
rest this afternoon—and if you don’t do it right you’ll be taking
them out tomorrow and putting them in properly. You hear me?’
Malcolm muttered something unintelligible. ‘What’d you say, boy?’
Charlie demanded.

Malcolm raised his eyes to glare at his
father again. ‘You never let me go out. I never get any fun.’

‘You’ve got to earn it first. You’ll stop
home till you do your work right.’ He stared grimly at Malcolm, as
if waiting for the boy to argue, but Malcolm had lapsed into sullen
silence.

‘If you start doing your jobs properly I’ll
take you out myself.’ Charlie seemed to be waiting for Malcolm’s
response with more interest than his offhand manner suggested. ‘You
hear me, boy?’ he said when there was no reply. ‘I’ll take you to
the hotel sometime. Buy you a drink. Maybe shout you something
else,’ he added, glancing at Amy with a look that dared her to
argue the point.

Don’t you take my son whoring
, Amy
wanted to protest, but there was no need.

‘No thanks,’ Malcolm muttered.

‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ Charlie
said. ‘I offer to take you out and you don’t want to go? You were
grizzling about it five minutes ago. What do you bloody well want,
then?’

‘I want to go out with my mates. Not with
you.’

Charlie narrowed his eyes to scowl at
Malcolm, but Amy sensed the hurt underlying his anger. ‘You’re an
ungrateful little bugger, aren’t you? You watch your step, boy, or
I’ll teach you to—’

Just as Amy’s mind raced in search of some
way to distract Charlie again, she heard the sound of running steps
approaching the house. She rose to see who was coming in such a
hurry, but the door was flung open before she had the chance to
touch the handle.

Thomas stood in the doorway, his eyes wide
and staring. One leg of his trousers had a long rent over the knee,
as if he had fallen heavily on that side. Amy saw a patch of blood
seeping through the torn fabric.

Awareness jolted through her like a stab of
pain at the sight of Thomas’s face, twisted as it was with fear and
grief. She did not need his words to tell her what had
happened.

‘Amy, you’ve got to come home right now,’ he
choked out through a threatened sob. ‘John said for you to come.
It’s Pa. I think he’s…’ His face crumpled. He slumped forward into
Amy’s outstretched arms, his words muffled against her body.

*

Jack had risen early that morning, as he did
every day outside the brief luxury of the winter months when only
the house cows were milked. John and Harry had taken to suggesting
that he have a lie in of a morning, that there was no need for him
to come milking with them every time, but Jack was having none of
it.

‘I’ve got to keep an eye on you boys, see
that you make a decent job of things,’ he always told them, and his
older two ‘boys’, who were nearer forty than thirty, usually shared
a grin and said no more on the subject for a day or two.

Sometimes when the mornings were
particularly chilly he would regret what he thought of as his
determination and his sons privately called pig-headedness. But it
was not that easy, Jack had found, to give up the management of the
farm he had broken in largely with his own hands and where he had
spent most of his adult life. To let John and Harry take over would
be to concede defeat at the hands of old age; though in his more
candid moments he admitted to himself that he was contributing
little more than his presence when there was any heavy physical
work to be done.

Susannah was still sleeping soundly. He
studied her for a moment when he had finished dressing. She
retained a surprising measure of rigidity even in sleep, her body
perched as close to the edge of the bed as she could lie without
falling out.

Even in sleep she managed to reject him; her
stiffness and her awkward position showing with what reluctance she
shared his bed at all. His own body had left a hollow close to the
opposite edge, and he remembered with painful clarity the way that
bed had looked in the old days. The days when he had had Annie. No
separate hollows then; the bed had slumped in the middle so
markedly they had often joked that one day it would collapse
altogether. The nights had never been too cold in those years; not
with Annie’s warm body pressed close to his.

Susannah stirred in her sleep, relaxing a
little as if she sensed he was no longer in the bed. Jack left the
room quickly to avoid waking her. On the rare mornings he was
careless enough to be still in the bedroom when she woke, he was
always punished with a chilly glare, as Susannah showed him all
over again how much she resented his temerity for having slept with
her. It was not a pleasant way to start the day.

He was irritated with himself when he found
that the boys were all down at the cow shed ahead of him; it had
been a matter of pride with him for many years that he was always
the first person in the house to wake. By the time he had hurried
down from the house he was short of breath, and the tightness in
his chest that seemed to follow any exertion lately was so painful
that it took an effort of will to hide it.

‘Must have slept in a bit,’ he said gruffly
as he took his seat on the milking stool vacated for him by George.
‘Don’t know why I did that.’

‘No, I think the rest of us were a bit early
this morning,’ John said, brushing aside his father’s discomfiture.
‘I know I was, anyway.’ He gave an exaggerated yawn. ‘Can’t seem to
sleep properly just lately, Sophie’s so restless at night. She says
the baby’s keeping her awake.’ He snorted in amusement. ‘The little
beggar gave me a heck of a kick last night when I was trying to
give Soph a cuddle. He must be jealous of his old man.’

‘Might be a girl this time,’ Harry pointed
out.

John shrugged. ‘Suppose so. We’ve sort of
got used to boys, after three of them in a row. Sophie’d probably
like a girl, someone to give her a hand around the place.’

‘Sophie’s a good girl,’ Jack said, only too
aware of how much more uncomfortable his home would be if it were
not for Sophie’s patient acceptance of the lion’s share of the
work. A few more weeks and she would be too large and cumbersome to
do the heavier work, forcing Susannah to do whatever could not be
avoided altogether. Jack dreaded the thought of the sour moods he
was going to have to put up with when that happened.

‘Mmm, Sophie’s pretty good,’ John said. ‘I
just wish she’d start sleeping properly again.’

‘Jane was moaning I’ve been keeping her
awake lately,’ Harry put in, looking so pleased with himself that
if they had both been just a little younger Jack would have been
strongly tempted to give him a kick.

‘Yes, we all know about you and Jane,’ John
said in a long-suffering tone. ‘She hasn’t locked you outside for a
while, eh?’

Harry glared at his brother, then turned his
scowl on the others when the younger boys burst out laughing and
Jack indulged in a grin. ‘She hasn’t done that for years,’ he said
huffily, then gave up his attempt at dignity and joined in the
laughter, even though it was at his own expense. ‘Boy, that was a
good row,’ he said with deep satisfaction.

‘Why do you and Jane fight all the time?’
George asked.

‘We don’t,’ Harry said. ‘Jane just gets
worked up about things sometimes.’

‘You think they’re bad now?’ John said. ‘You
fellows are too young to remember what they used to be like. Harry
used to have to buy another load of plates and things just about
every week, Jane was that keen on throwing them at him. And she
used to black both his eyes, and—’

‘Hey, hey, don’t get too carried away,’
Harry protested. ‘She never did that! She wasn’t much good at
throwing things, either—she always used to miss me.’

‘Did she really give him a black eye, John?’
George asked, not quite willing to accept Harry’s word on the
subject.

‘No,’ John admitted. ‘Makes a good story,
though.’

‘Bloody cheek,’ Harry grumbled, but he
grinned as he said it.

Jack enjoyed their banter, though he could
not find the energy to take part in it. It was as much as he could
do to sit quietly and milk, and he was aware that he was getting
through fewer cows than the others. The boys were making it easy
for him. There was no need to get up from his stool when he had
finished with each cow; instead Thomas or George would let the cow
out of its bail and lead the next one in, tie it securely, then
dart on to the next bail.

He got up stiffly when the milking was
finished, for a moment regretting the pride that had made him leave
his walking stick in the porch. But Thomas was at his elbow before
he had taken half a dozen steps, the boy’s shoulders ready for his
father’s arm.

‘That’s my right-hand man,’ Jack told him,
gripping Thomas’s shoulder.

Breakfast was a noisy affair. John’s sons
were lively children, and they greeted their father boisterously,
while Sophie looked on placidly. The youngest, four-year-old Colin,
demanded to be tossed on his father’s knee and squealed in raucous
delight when John obliged. It was good to see them all happy and
healthy, but Jack found himself wishing for a little peace and
quiet. He almost sympathised with Susannah when he saw her pained
expression as she rubbed her temples.

‘Oh, do be quiet, George,’ she said when
George began explaining to Jack in great detail what sort of
engines the newest boat in the Northern Steamship Company’s fleet
had. ‘I can hardly hear myself think as it is, without you
prattling on with such nonsense.’

George pulled a face at her, but turned away
before Susannah had the chance to see his scowl. He went on
talking, his only concession to his mother’s complaint being a
slight lowering of his voice.

‘And there’s the
Terra Nova
too,
that’s the paddle steamer. Did you know it—’

‘George!’ Susannah snapped. ‘I told you to
be quiet. Really, I’ve no idea why you want to talk about that sort
of thing. Boats, indeed! Anyone would think you were a common
tradesman.’

‘I was just talking, that’s all,’ George
said. ‘Dunno what’s wrong with talking.’

Nothing fazed that boy, least of all
criticism from his mother, Jack thought in quiet admiration mixed
with a tinge of envy. George had the happy knack of ignoring
Susannah altogether when she did not force herself into his
awareness. Not like Thomas, who in his mother’s presence tended to
lapse into such utter silence that anyone who did not know him well
might have thought him stupid.