Settling the Account (11 page)

He felt the bed move as Susannah lay down
and pulled the blankets over herself. ‘You don’t want me either,’
she said quietly.

Was she going to keep him awake all night?
‘Wouldn’t do me much good if I did.’ He had not meant to sound so
bitter, but the words could not be called back.

‘No one does.’

He heard the small sounds of Susannah
weeping and trying to hide it. He could picture tears pooling in
her eyes and running down into her pillow, and he felt the bed move
from the tremor that ran through her body. For a moment the urge to
roll over, put an arm around her and draw her close was almost
overpowering, but he resisted it. The time when he and Susannah
could have given each other comfort was long past.

November 1897

By the spring of 1897 the new co-operative
had had two successful seasons, and all the effort Frank had put
into persuading the farmers of the district to place their faith in
the venture had been well and truly justified. The establishment of
the co-operative had, as it turned out, coincided with the first
signs of recovery from what would afterwards be called ‘The Long
Slump’; thus the suppliers found themselves getting a greater share
of the price fetched by their butter at the same time as the price
itself was steadily increasing.

Charlie had become a supplier to the factory
for the simple reason that there was nowhere else to sell his milk.
He refused to become a shareholder, repeating his refusal over and
over again until Amy was heartily sick of the subject. She
carefully refrained from reminding him that he had never actually
been invited to become one. But although he was denied a share in
the profits of the co-operative, Charlie benefited in a modest way
from the higher prices paid for his milk.

Amy had to rely on the snippets of
information she gleaned from Lizzie or from her brothers to find
out that the factory was doing well; Charlie never discussed such
matters with her. She had hoped that the lightening of any worries
he might have had over money would cause him to mellow somewhat,
particularly towards the children, but he seemed to be as demanding
as ever, and as reluctant to praise.

Charlie had little respect for ‘book
learning’, but he still expected his sons to do at least as well as
the other children in the valley school. When Malcolm failed his
Standard Three examination at the end of 1896 Charlie delivered a
beating, but he had no words of praise for David when the younger
boy did well in the same test.

The new minister (as Reverend Simons was
still called after two years in the town) was considered something
of a scholar by his parishioners, and Amy suspected this was part
of Charlie’s continued animosity towards him. Reverend Simons’
sermons tended to contain words of more syllables than most of the
congregation felt comfortable with, but it was his subject matter
that most excited Charlie’s outrage.

‘Trying to stop a man having a drink after a
hard day’s work,’ was his constant grumble. ‘Interfering in a man’s
honest pleasures.’ For a time Amy had thought he might cease going
to church entirely, thereby curtailing her only regular outing. But
among Charlie’s crudely articulated theories on how to manage a
wife was the idea that women needed regular church-going to keep
them in a suitably cowed frame of mind. And as he did not allow Amy
to go any further than Lizzie’s house unaccompanied, that meant he
had to take her.

Charlie was not the only man irritated by
Reverend Simons’ preoccupation with the evils of alcohol. Mr
Bateson, the town’s brewer and newspaper editor, had made good his
declaration that he would not darken the door of the church again
while Reverend Simons held sway there. But the antagonism between
these two men did not stop with Mr Bateson’s absence from church.
That was just the beginning.

Mr Bateson’s reports of the fortnightly
meetings of the Ruatane Gospel Temperance and Mutual Improvement
Society, founded and chaired by the minister, could not be
described as complimentary. While the
Ruatane Herald
dutifully reported each meeting in language that at first glance
seemed innocuous, hints of animosity were there for anyone who
cared to search for them.

The journalistic feud started off harmlessly
enough, with disparaging comments in the
Herald
about the
level of education of a visiting speaker at one of the temperance
meetings, who had been more distinguished by his enthusiasm than by
the quality of his grammar. Charlie read the criticism aloud with
relish, despite the fact that Amy was quite sure he had no idea
what was wrong with the unfortunate speaker’s choice of verb
forms.

The following Sunday, Reverend Simons
denounced from the pulpit those who claimed to be above their
neighbours, taking as his text the Gospel account of the Pharisee
and the Publican. He announced that anyone was welcome to attend
meetings of the Society, explicitly including brewers, particularly
those who considered they had a superior command of grammar, in his
invitation. Reverend Simons also informed his congregation that one
of the Tauranga newspapers was now running a regular column they
might find ‘Somewhat more edifying than the local journalistic
fare’. When Amy managed to sneak a glance at the newspaper in
question on her next visit to the store, she soon found the column
under the pseudonym ‘Pericles’. The style of the prose told her
that the author was none other than Reverend Simons.

From then on, she read the column whenever
she had the chance, which was only if the newspaper happened to be
lying around when she visited Lizzie or one of her sisters-in-law.
She enjoyed reading ‘Pericles’ ’ opinions on social issues such as
the low wages paid to women, the evils of secular education, and of
course the ever-present matter of alcohol and the violence and
misery it led to. The column was certainly a good deal more
entertaining than the ‘Ladies’ Page’ of the
Weekly News
,
which was the only reading matter Charlie ever shoved in her
direction.

While Mr Bateson did not take up Reverend
Simons’ invitation to attend any temperance meetings, he continued
to take an avid editorial interest in the goings on of the Society
and its members. When the opportunity came for him to expose a
small scandal, he pounced on it.

The front page of the next issue of the
Ruatane Herald
carried an article about a crop of barley
grown in Ruatane that season. The barley was of such good quality
that it had fetched an excellent price from a large brewing company
in Auckland, and according to the editor other local farmers might
well be inspired to grow similar crops.

What made this news of particular interest
to Mr Bateson was the fact that the farmer concerned was the Vice
Chairman of Reverend Simons’ beloved Temperance Society. Mr Bateson
made much of the word ‘Vice’ in the guilty party’s title. His
article affected shock and outrage that a man who was obviously
considered a pillar of the community should be producing a crop to
supply an industry so vilified by that very Society in which he
held office.

Reverend Simons was hard put to defend his
deputy against a charge so demonstrably true. In his capacity as
‘Pericles’ he railed against the aspersions being cast on the man’s
character, but at the same time he admitted that selling a crop to
the brewers could be seen as incompatible with holding office in a
Temperance Society. And his next sermon told the local farmers in
no uncertain terms that if any of them were tempted to grow barley
for brewing, they should examine their consciences carefully.

‘For do not forget,’ Reverend Simons
thundered from the pulpit, ‘the day will come when we will all be
judged. And on that day, how will you be able to face your Maker
and confess that you grew a crop that drags women into the most
hideous form of degradation, turns men into beasts who fight one
another and desert their families, that is the root of so much that
all men know is evil? Better that the crop be cast into the fire
than the grower’s soul be damned for eternity.’ There was no barley
grown in Ruatane the following season.

Reverend Simons did not save his admonitions
for the grown men. He was particularly earnest towards those youths
of the town who were dragged along to church by their parents,
exhorting them to resist the blandishments of evil companions who
would draw them from the paths of righteousness and into dishonour.
There tended to be a good deal of noisy foot scuffing from his
intended audience when the minister made such remarks, more from
suppressed resentment than from any sense of remorse.

Malcolm’s animosity towards the minister was
based as much on the length of Reverence Simons’ sermons as on
their subject matter. He squirmed and scowled all through the
harangues that often stretched close to forty minutes, lacking his
father’s ability (which most of the adult men in the congregation
shared) to nod off inconspicuously after the first few minutes. And
after church he always joined in eagerly with Charlie’s complaints
about the minister, enjoying the novelty of being allowed to
criticise an adult in front of his father.

Amy hated to hear Malcolm scoffing about
Reverend Simons, but it would have been useless for her to try and
scold him when he was only parroting his father’s opinions. So she
held her tongue and hoped he would learn respect for the minister
as he grew older, though her own good sense told her that was as
unlikely as Charlie’s joining the Temperance Society.

She knew something untoward had happened
when Malcolm and David came into the kitchen one afternoon giggling
over some shared secret, then abruptly fell silent when they saw
her watching them.

‘What are you two laughing about?’ she
asked.

‘Nothing,’ Malcolm muttered. ‘Shut up,
Dave,’ he grumbled, digging David in the ribs as the younger boy
let a giggle escape.

‘But it’s so funny,’ David protested. ‘Ma
will think it’s funny too.’

‘Have you been getting up to mischief, Mal?’
Amy asked.

‘I haven’t done nothing,’ Malcolm said,
fixing her with a resentful glare. ‘You always think I’ve done
something wrong. You’re just like Pa.’

Amy could not help but wince at his thrust.
‘Please yourself, then. Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’

‘They had a parade, Ma,’ David said, full of
excitement. ‘Then they had a big fight, and there was a bonfire,
and fireworks, and—’

‘You’re telling it all mixed up,’ Malcolm
said in disgust. ‘Tell it properly.’

David screwed up his face in concentration.
‘But I forget all the bits,’ he admitted. ‘You tell her, Mal.’

‘All right, then,’ Malcolm said grudgingly,
but he grinned as he turned to Amy. ‘You know it was Guy Fawkes
last night?’ Amy nodded. ‘Well, it was in the paper that there was
going to be a big fireworks display and things at the cricket
ground.’

‘Yes, I heard your father say something
about that, but I didn’t see it. I think I used that paper for
lighting the fire.’

‘Well, it didn’t just say fireworks. It said
there’d be a speech by… what’s that funny name?’ he asked
David.

‘Per… Perry-something,’ David offered.

Awareness was slowly dawning on Amy. ‘Not
Pericles?’

‘Yes, that was it,’ said Malcolm. ‘He writes
things in the Tauranga paper, but everyone knows it’s really old
Simons. Anyway, Bateson put it in the newspaper that this
Perri-what-you-said was going to make a speech, and there’d be a
band and everything. They put signs on the hitching rails and
things, too. So everyone went out to watch, and then there was a
big parade with a cart from the brewery, and all the fellows like
Des and his mates walking around it, and—’

‘Mal, how do you know about all this?’ Amy
interrupted.

‘I just heard,’ Malcolm said with a
scowl.

‘Who did you hear it from?’ she persisted.
Malcolm said nothing, just glared at her. ‘It was that Des Feenan
who told you, wasn’t it?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You haven’t been to school today, have you?
You’ve been off with those boys again.’ But Malcolm clearly had no
intention of answering. She sighed and returned to the vegetables
she was chopping. ‘All right, don’t tell me. Finish the story,
anyway.’

Malcolm went on eagerly. ‘They had a sort of
band, with whistles and kerosene tins and things. And Bateson was
riding along with them. And right on top of the cart they had a
sort of dummy sitting on an old chair.’ He broke into
uncontrollable giggles, and was unable to speak for a few moments.
‘They had it done up like a minister!’

‘I thought they might have,’ Amy
murmured.

‘Bateson was calling out to everyone that
the dummy—you know, Perri-thing—was going to make a speech. Then
Sergeant Riley came out and told them to go home, but they didn’t
take any notice. Riley got scared, and he sloped off.’

‘Tell Ma about the fight, Mal,’ David
prompted.

‘I was just going to. Then a whole lot of
men turned up—Des said they’re in that dopey Temperance thing. Or
their wives are, and they made them come out and fight. They had a
really good fight. I wish I’d been there. Des reckons he broke
someone’s arm.’

‘But Des got a tooth knocked out, you said,’
David put in.

‘He reckoned it was worth it, though. The
other men wrecked the dummy and tipped the cart over, then they
went off. Bateson and the others had to carry the dummy to the
cricket ground, but they had a good bonfire and burned it. And they
had heaps of fireworks, too—dear ones from Auckland, Des said.’

‘I wish I’d seen the fireworks,’ said David.
‘Have you seen fireworks, Ma?’

‘Course she hasn’t! She hasn’t seen
anything,’ Malcolm said before Amy could admit that she had never
had the chance to see fireworks. ‘Someone’s going to sort old
Simons out, anyway, he needn’t think he’s so smart. He never came
near them last night, he was too scared. Coward.’