Settling the Account (45 page)

‘I’ll have no part of it,’ Charlie said.
‘They needn’t think I’m paying out good money for it, either.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s going to ask you,
Charlie.’

There seemed no difficulty in raising the
money. Malcolm had been the only soldier from Ruatane to have gone
to South Africa, and the locals readily forgot the boy’s
misdemeanours in the excitement of commemorating him. By July the
monument was ready, and its dedication had been planned. And Amy
was preparing herself for a battle.

She waited until the evening before the
dedication to make her approach to Charlie, making sure that David
had gone to bed before she raised the subject.

‘The memorial’s ready,’ she began. Charlie
made no comment, merely rustled his newspaper noisily as a sign
that he did not want to listen.

‘They’re having a special service tomorrow
afternoon—a dedication, they’re calling it. They’re going to have
speeches and things.’ A grunt was the only reply, though she knew
he was following every word.

She took a deep breath. ‘I want to go to the
service.’

‘Well, you’re not,’ he said from behind his
newspaper.

‘I should go—I think it’s the right thing to
do.’

He lowered his newspaper and glared at her.
‘Are you deaf as well as stupid? You heard me. You’re not going,
and that’s that. The boy’s…’ his voice cracked a little. ‘He’s
nothing to do with us. He’s no son of mine.’

‘I think I’m the best judge of that,’ Amy
said, irritation briefly getting the better of her. ‘Well, you stay
home if you want, Charlie, but when the whole town’s gone to the
trouble of putting up a monument to my son, I think I should be
there to see it dedicated.’

‘I’ve had about enough of you, you nagging
little bitch!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t care a damn what you think!
You’re stopping home tomorrow.’

Amy bent over her sewing and made a show of
concentrating on a difficult seam.

‘You hear me?’ he demanded. ‘Got it in that
dopey head of yours yet?’

‘Yes, I understand.’ She waited a moment
before adding, ‘John’s coming over tomorrow.’

‘What’s he want here?’

‘He’s coming to fetch me. I thought you
mightn’t want to come, so John said he’d pick me up. Harry’ll
probably come, too—the whole family’s going in tomorrow.’

She looked up from her sewing to meet his
gaze. ‘You can tell them why I can’t go. They might make a fuss
about it.’

His fingers gripped the edges of the paper
so tightly that Amy saw his knuckles whiten. She watched the flow
of thoughts across his face, knowing he was trying to decide
whether to enforce his ban anyway.

Discretion won over pride. ‘Suppose you
might as well go,’ he said. ‘Get you out of my sight for a
bit.’

Amy wished she could leave it at that and be
grateful, but she had not quite finished the argument. ‘And I’ll
take Dave with me.’

‘No, you won’t. I’ve work for him
tomorrow.’

‘Charlie, it’s a service for Dave’s brother.
Don’t you think he should be there for it?’

‘No.’ He looked at her, clearly waiting for
her to say something else, but Amy stared back in silence,
wondering if he would realise the obvious for himself.

Comprehension dawned. ‘Did you tell that
brother of yours Dave’d be coming too?’

‘Yes, John’s expecting Dave. He’ll come
looking for him if he’s not around.’

He scowled at her, but Amy saw defeat in his
face. ‘You and your bloody family! To hell with the lot of you! All
right, take the bugger with you. I don’t care what you do, just
shut up your whining.’

‘Thank you,’ Amy murmured as she resumed her
sewing.

It was victory of a sort, but she wished it
could have been achieved with less animosity. A vague feeling of
unease troubled her for the rest of the evening and all the
following morning.

Charlie had made himself scarce some time
before John rode up to the house. ‘So he’s not coming, eh?’ John
asked Amy while they waited for David to catch a horse and lead it
over to them.

Amy shook her head. ‘Don’t mention it in
front of Dave. He’s upset about it all—you know, how Charlie won’t
let anyone say Mal’s name and all that. And now with Charlie not
coming to the service, when Dave knows everyone’s going to be
there. I’ve been frightened him and Charlie are going to have a row
about it.’

‘Well, I won’t say anything. Can’t speak for
anyone else, though.’ John hoisted Amy behind his saddle for the
short ride down to the main track, ‘You forget about the old fellow
for this afternoon, eh? You look as though you could do with a rest
from it all.’

It was David who really deserved the rest,
Amy thought as she sat squashed companionably between Sophie and
Jane on the way into town, each of her sisters-in-law holding a
child on her lap. The two farms’ worth of Leiths made quite a
procession down the valley, with buggies full to overflowing while
most of the riding horses carried a small child or two as well as a
larger rider. David was quiet for the first few minutes, but Amy
saw his face gradually lighten as he began talking with his
cousins.

It was good to see David have a rare
opportunity to let down his guard. He was still a month short of
fifteen, but he had been forced into a wariness that seemed
unnatural in a boy so young. Not that David looked much like a
fifteen-year-old. He was only four months older than Dolly, the
nearest in age of his cousins, but he appeared several years older
than any of them.

David seemed to have filled out his long,
lanky body in a rush over the last few months, Amy thought as she
studied his lean, well-muscled frame. The extra work since
Malcolm’s departure had forced him into rapid growth. All his
shirts were becoming too tight for him, with the muscle he had
acquired. His face was still boyish, but his body was unmistakably
a man’s.

He had borne more of the burden of Charlie’s
moods than she had lately, Amy knew. She only had to cope with
Charlie at mealtimes and during the usually silent evenings; David
had to work with him all day long.

Charlie had never been an easy man to
please, but now it seemed that David could do nothing right. If the
boy took pains over his work he was slow and stupid; if he hurried,
he was making a shoddy job of things. And there was one failing
David had in his father’s eyes that no amount of hard work could
ever atone for: he was not Malcolm.

Amy knew there had been a great deal of
interest in Malcolm’s monument, but she had not been prepared for
the size of the gathering at the town’s cemetery. Every house in
town must be empty, she thought as she gazed around at the sea of
faces. Gratitude brought a brief rush of tears, but she fought them
back, anxious to show a calm demeanour.

She took David’s arm and let John steer her
through the crowd with his hand on her other shoulder, people
falling back to make room for them. She heard murmurs all around
her as they walked, snatches of audible words among them:

‘Hasn’t come.’ ‘His own son’s service, too.’
‘Such a shame, poor woman.’ ‘Miserable old bugger.’

The last voice, clearly a man’s, was
hurriedly ‘Shushed’ as they passed, but not before Amy had seen
David’s face stiffen. She gripped his arm more tightly, and felt
John give her shoulder an encouraging squeeze as they came to the
centre of the crowd around Malcolm’s memorial.

It was a comfortable feeling, standing
surrounded by so many people who wished her well. All her family
were there, Lizzie and Frank nearly constituting a crowd in their
own right with their seven children. Almost everyone else she knew
at least by name, and all around her she saw kind faces. She
noticed to her surprise that a girl she barely knew by sight was
crying quietly, her cheeks wet with tears. Amy was touched by the
girl’s show of grief, though she was sure it must be no more than a
reaction to the emotion around her.

Charlie should be here
.
He should
be here to see how everyone wants to be kind to us
. Instead,
she knew, he was sitting at home brooding on the wrongs the world
had done him. She could think of no way to draw him out of his dark
solitude.

Fretting about Charlie would not help her
behave with proper dignity. Amy studied the tall, black marble
stone while she waited for the service to begin, impressed at the
size of the memorial. It had Malcolm’s name and the years of his
birth and death, as well as the fact that he had died while serving
in the war, with a verse near the base just above an inscription
stating that the stone had been erected by the people of Ruatane.
There was nothing to say who Malcolm’s parents were.

Reverend Simons used a stick to guide his
steps now, but he was still as capable as ever of noisily
denouncing sin from the pulpit of his church. Today he was in a
softer mood. He said a prayer for the repose of Malcolm’s soul, the
words a set form from the prayer book, but kind sincerity in his
voice. When he followed this prayer with a short thanksgiving for
Malcolm’s life, Amy was pleasantly surprised at the apparent
fervency of the assembly’s ‘Amen’.

The minister ended with a prayer dedicating
the stone to Malcolm’s memory, then spoke briefly to the assembled
crowd, emphasising the gratitude for Malcolm’s sacrifice that the
stone represented. It was a mark of the community’s goodwill, he
told them, that so many people had contributed so generously. He
sounded quite detached until, right at the end of his talk, he
looked straight at Amy and said,

‘I’m sorry that Mr Stewart wasn’t able to be
here today, Mrs Stewart.’

Amy met his gaze and gave a small shrug. She
heard the renewed murmurs aroused by the minister’s words, and was
glad when they were silenced by the next speaker’s striding
forward.

Sergeant Riley looked rather self-conscious
at having been thrust into the role of representing officialdom at
the service, but the solemnity of the occasion did not make him any
less forthright than usual.

‘Most of you’d know that Mal Stewart was no
friend of mine,’ he began, raising a low murmur of shock. Amy felt
a tiny smile tugging at her lips. She would have thought less of
Sergeant Riley if he had pretended otherwise.

‘That doesn’t mean I can’t admire courage
when I see it,’ he said, raising his voice a little to cut through
the murmurs. ‘I called that boy a lot of names in my time, but I
never called him coward.’ His mouth twisted in a wry grin. ‘Mad,
maybe, especially when he was on the back of a horse, but never a
coward. He was one of the bravest kids I ever knew.’

He looked around at the faces staring back
at him. ‘I’m sure he made a fine soldier. He did us all proud, and
it’s only right that we’ve put this up,’ he patted the memorial,
‘to say thank you to him. And to his family.’ His eyes met Amy’s,
and he nodded thoughtfully at her. ‘He was a fine boy in his own
way, Mrs Stewart. You can be proud of him.’

I’d sooner have him alive
. But she
gave as good a smile as she could manage.

Sergeant Riley stepped back into the crowd,
and Amy saw people looking expectantly in her direction. It was
time for someone from Malcolm’s family to speak, she realised. Time
for Charlie to speak.

‘Looks like I’ve got to say something,’ John
murmured in her ear. ‘Haven’t made a speech since I got
married—can’t remember what I said then, either.’ He took a step
forward and cleared his throat noisily.

John was a man of few words, and Amy was
grateful for the readiness with which he took over the
responsibility Charlie had abdicated. He told the crowd that
Malcolm’s family were grateful for the memorial, and for the
numbers that had turned out to remember Malcolm. After three
sentences he had exhausted his fund of oratory. He thanked everyone
once again, and stepped back to Amy’s side with obvious relief.

‘Thanks, John,’ she said quietly, taking his
hand in hers and squeezing it.

‘Just don’t ask me to do it again in a
hurry, eh?’ John grinned at her and put an arm around her
shoulders. ‘You all right?’ Amy nodded, leaning against his broad
chest and reflecting on how much it was like snuggling against
their father had been. ‘Good girl.’

He looked around at the crowd, which was
already beginning to disperse. ‘We’d better hang around here for a
bit, let them get a head start on us. It’ll take them a couple of
minutes to get the hall set up properly.’

‘What for, John? Aren’t we going home
now?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? They’re putting on
afternoon tea in the church hall for us, tea and cakes and
all.’

‘Oh. I didn’t think we’d be out for that
long.’

‘I suppose we don’t have to turn up,’ John
said doubtfully, but Amy shook her head.

‘Yes, we do. Don’t worry, it’ll be all
right. He won’t mind if dinner’s a bit late just this once.’ And if
he did mind, she would just have to manage him. She could not
insult these good people by refusing to be guest of honour at their
tea.

Lizzie took charge of Amy at the afternoon
tea, shooing David away to talk to his cousins. Amy saw him deep in
conversation with Beth soon afterwards, and when she next caught
sight of him he was in a corner talking earnestly with George. She
was glad to see David animated again; the constant reminders of
Malcolm’s death all through the service had left him looking tense
and drawn with the effort of holding back tears.

She spent the next hour or so giving polite
answers to well-meaning questions, smiling and nodding at people,
and being plied with tea and a variety of cakes and sandwiches. It
was a relief when she found John at her side again.

‘Time we were going, I think,’ he said. ‘No
one else’ll leave till we do. I’d better grab Dave off George
before that mad brother of ours has him on the boat and halfway to
Auckland.’