Settling the Account (47 page)

Amy waited for the flood of words to
subside, shaking her head as he spoke. ‘I can’t, Davie. I can’t
just up and leave like that. You’ll have enough to do looking after
yourself without me to worry about.’ She put her hands over his,
willing herself into calm as she tried to think about what was best
for David.

It was like the years of sickening fear for
Malcolm all over again. Charlie would never forgive David; and
David would be as stubborn in his turn. It was no use to consider
sending him to live with John; it would only be a matter of time
before he and his father fought again, and more seriously, if they
were separated by no more than a few fences. It wouldn’t be fair to
try and keep David close to her.

‘I think you’re right, Dave. I think you’ve
got to go.’ Her voice cracked on the last word. ‘It’s Waihi you’re
thinking of,’ she said, barely managing to school herself into a
semblance of calm. She began folding David’s clothes, glad of
something to occupy her hands. ‘That’s where the mines are. You’ll
have to get off the boat at Tauranga and then… oh, I don’t know,
perhaps there’s a coach or something.’

‘You come too,’ David insisted.

Amy shook her head. ‘Where would I stay? The
people who run the mine might only have places for men for sleep.
They wouldn’t want someone turning up with their mother. You’ll
have to think about learning the work and everything, and getting
to know strange people.’ Her little boy, among strangers. She bit
back tears, knowing that David would not keep his own control if
she let hers slip.

‘Well… maybe I can’t take you just now. But
I’ll send for you, Ma. I’ll make lots of money for us, and I’ll get
a proper house for you to live in, then I’ll send for you. Will you
be all right with him till I can get you away?’

Amy gave him a watery smile. ‘Dave, I’d been
looking after myself around your father for a lot of years before
you got big enough to thump him on my account. Don’t you worry
about me.’

She went to fetch something for David to
carry his clothes in. There would be no chance to make him a neat
bag like the one she had sewn for Malcolm. She tipped a pile of
mending out of its drawstring carrier and onto her bed, then
brought the bag to David’s room and packed his clothes into it. It
was the one in which she had carried her own belongings to
Charlie’s house on the day of her marriage, she realised as she
drew it closed.

‘This is all the money I’ve got just now,’
she said, reaching into her apron pocket and pulling out a few
coins. ‘Only one and threepence. I haven’t got any in the bank. I
gave it all to Mal. Maybe this’ll buy you your dinner tomorrow.’
She pressed the coins into his hand and closed his fingers over
them. ‘George can get you on the boat for free, can’t he? You’ll
have to ride with the cargo, though. Maybe he’ll lend you a bit of
money, too—I can pay him back soon. I’ll be getting my next
quarter’s worth of Grandpa’s money this month, I’ll be able to send
you some then.’

‘I won’t need your money, Ma. I’m going to
get a good job.’

‘You’ll have to eat till you get one. And
you’ll have to pay for the coach. Dave, you mustn’t go into town
tonight—I’m sure it’s going to rain, and you’ll catch your death
walking all that way on a cold night like this. Stay the night with
your Uncle John.’

‘No, I’ll stay with Uncle Frank,’ David
said. ‘I’ll be closer on my way to town for tomorrow morning.
Anyway, Beth’s got a kitten with a broken leg, and we thought we’d
have a go at setting it. I told her I’d try and get down to give
her a hand this week.’

Amy watched him throw the bag over his
shoulder. ‘You’ll write to me, won’t you? I’ll want to know how
you’re getting on.’

‘Every week,’ he promised. ‘Maybe more than
that.’

‘I don’t think your father would let me get
letters from you, though. You’d better send them to Uncle John, or
maybe Uncle Frank. Ask Uncle Frank to lend you some money,
too—that’d be better than asking George. But be sure and tell him
I’ll pay it back as soon as I can.’

She hurried along at his side, trying to
match her steps to his long ones, as they walked from the house to
the beginning of the track. Amy tried to think of the sensible
advice David might need now that he was to make his own way in the
world, all the while knowing she was ill-equipped to give such
advice. But the words filled up the silence that would otherwise
fall between them; words would stop her from breaking down in front
of David.

Charlie had gone back to working on the
fence. They had to pass him to get to the track. ‘You still here?’
he growled.

‘I’m going, don’t you worry.’

Charlie spat on the ground. ‘Good. I don’t
want to see you round here again.’

David stopped in his tracks and stared long
and hard at his father. ‘I’m going, all right. But I’ll tell you
this—if I hear you’ve laid a hand on Ma, I’ll come back. And I’ll
kill you.’ He said it in a low, calm voice; not as a threat, merely
as a statement of fact. Amy could see that the words had shaken
Charlie, despite his attempts to seem unconcerned.

‘Get out of here,’ he said, and turned his
back on them.

Amy flung her arms around David’s neck and
gave him a long, lingering embrace. When she released him, she had
to bite her lip to hold back the sob that begged to be allowed out.
‘Take care, Davie,’ she said, her voice made small by the tightness
in her throat.

He bent to press his mouth against hers one
more time, then straightened up and walked off down the track, the
dog bounding along beside him in oblivious delight at the outing.
Amy stood and watched, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth
and her shoulders shaking with sobs.

‘Good riddance,’ she heard Charlie mutter,
and suddenly she could not bear to be within sight of him. She ran
to the house, stumbling over the rough ground with eyes half
blinded by tears, rushed into her bedroom and slammed the door
behind her.

She braced her back against the door, then
looked about wildly for some way of blocking it. Tomorrow she would
have to face the aching emptiness of the house without David, but
tonight she was not going to be in the same room as Charlie.

She dragged her heavy chest of drawers over
to the door, wedging it against the hinges and into the corner of
the room, so that any attempt to force the door open would only
press the chest harder against the wall. She had scarcely finished
shoving it in place and was leaning against the chest, catching her
breath, when she heard Charlie come in the back door shouting for
her.

‘Hey! Where the hell are you, woman?’ he
called. ‘You got that dinner on yet?’

She made no answer. Instead she stood
silently, listening to the sound of his footsteps on the kitchen
floor. He hammered on her bedroom door, his fist making it
shake.

‘You’re in there, aren’t you?’ His voice
came muffled through the wood. ‘Having a sulk, eh? Well, you can
bloody well get out here and get my dinner on. I’ll not put up with
your nonsense tonight.’

Again she said nothing, but pressed her body
more firmly against the chest.

‘I’m warning you,’ he called. The door
handle turned, and the door opened a fraction. Charlie shoved on
it, but the chest did its work. The harder he shoved, the more
solidly it was wedged against the wall.

‘You little bitch!’ he roared. ‘You get out
here or you’ll be sorry.’ The handle rattled again. Amy heard a
stream of abuse directed at her, then there was a brief
silence.

‘Well, bugger you, then,’ he yelled at last.
‘Think I need you? I managed for myself before I ever had you to
plague me, you useless, good-for-nothing little slut!’

She heard pots and plates being rattled, as
Charlie snatched things off the shelves.

‘You can stay in there and starve, and good
bloody riddance to you! I can get my own meal on,’ he called. She
could tell from the fainter sound that he had his back turned to
her. The rattling and banging went on, interrupted by a crash and a
curse as what sounded like a mug fell to the floor.

He couldn’t get his own meal; of that she
was quite certain. It was more than seventeen years since he had
last had the need to, and his kitchen was a very different place
from what it had been then. She doubted if he so much as knew how
to work the range. He could boil the jug for himself, and get a
slice of bread, but anything beyond that would have taken him all
evening to manage.

It did not take Charlie long to realise the
same thing. ‘Shit,’ she heard him cry out. She guessed that he had
burnt his hand. He slammed his fist against her door; she felt the
force of it right through the chest of drawers. ‘Bugger you!’ he
roared. ‘Bugger you! Think you’re the only woman in the world, do
you?’

The back door slammed, making the whole
house shake. Soon afterwards she heard the sound of Charlie riding
away down the track, and knew that he was taking himself into town
to eat at a hotel. And perhaps to gratify himself with a whore
afterwards, if he did not get too drunk first. He would not be back
before the early hours of the morning.

Amy sank to the floor and clutched her arms
around herself, her back resting against the chest. The room was in
darkness now. She gave a violent shudder as the night chill took
hold of her. The house was so quiet that she could hear the sound
of her own breathing.

I’ve lost all my children now
. The
thought seemed punctuated by the rhythmic throbbing in her head.
First it was Ann
. The memory of the tiny baby in her arms,
and the empty cradle and her emptier heart after the baby had been
snatched away, drew a ragged sob from her throat.
Then
Alexander. They never even let me see him. Then all those babies. I
hardly had the chance to know I was carrying them, then they were
dead. And Mal. I sent him off for his big adventure, and it killed
him. And now David. They’re all gone now. All gone
.

Another sob, then another, and the flood of
grief was upon her. She flung herself on the floor, her face soon
smeared with tears while her body shook with the violence of her
sobs. Grief racked her till she thought she had no more strength to
weep, and then strength came from somewhere and she wept again.

‘David!’ she screamed aloud, the name
ripping a path through her constricted throat, and the pain of
screaming left her exhausted. She lay with her face against the
floorboards, her hands clenching and unclenching on the empty air.
At that moment, it was hard to think of any reason to go on
living.

July – November 1902

But even if it no longer had any meaning,
life was not something she could slip out of like a worn, old
dress. Amy came to herself in the early morning cold and stiff, her
throat raw with weeping, and her body aching after a night spent on
the bare floor. She was alive, and the world had to be faced.

She undressed in the dark, and clambered
into bed in her underwear, too weary for the bother of lighting a
candle or putting on her nightdress. She did not know how long she
had spent in the bed when she heard Charlie come home; nor how long
it was after that before the habit learned over years woke her. It
was time to get up, pull on some clothes, and make breakfast.

Amy ate her share as soon as she had cooked
it, swallowing the food mechanically, hardly knowing what it was.
She had cooked far too much, she realised as she dished it up, now
that she had no growing boys to fill. The thought sent a fresh pang
of loss through her, so acute that she felt it as a pain in her
belly. It was not going to be easy to keep up the composed façade
she intended to show Charlie. But she was determined not to give
him the satisfaction of seeing her grief in its raw nakedness.
Night and the privacy of her own room were the time and place for
such self-indulgence.

She dished up an extravagant helping for
Charlie and left it on the side of the range to keep warm, quite
sure that he would sleep in a little after his outing of the night
before. Her empty plate was on the bench with her knife and fork
placed neatly on it by the time Charlie came out to the
kitchen.

Amy felt his eyes fixed on her as she placed
the plate in front of him. She busied herself with tidying the
kitchen, filling the silence with the rattling of pots and plates.
It took her some time to clear the mess Charlie had left after his
abortive attempt to make his own dinner the night before, but she
was glad of the distraction as she picked up the last shards of
broken china from the corner where they lay half-hidden, wiped the
spilt sugar from the bench, and swept up the heap of barley that
had fallen to the floor when Charlie knocked over the bag. He
seemed oblivious to the state he had left the kitchen in.
If I
wasn’t here, he’d have the kitchen worse than that. There’d be mud
everywhere, too, if I wasn’t cleaning it up all the time. After a
couple of weeks, you’d think there’d never been a woman in this
house
.

Charlie ate his food in silence, but he
caught her eye when she reached across to take his empty plate.
‘Don’t think you can get away with that nonsense of yours again.
Locking yourself in, and no dinner on the table and all. I’ll let
it pass this time—you were pining for your bairn,’ he said with a
sneer. ‘Well, I’ve got rid of that young bugger, you’ll not be
seeing him again. And
you
,’ he stabbed a finger towards her,
‘can just behave yourself. Or I’ll make you sorry for it.’

As if there was anything else he could do to
hurt her, now that David was gone. She said nothing as she walked
back to the bench, her mouth tight with the effort of holding back
a retort.

‘And that’s enough of your sulking, too.
I’ll have no more of it.’ He scraped his chair away from the table
and walked towards the door. Amy stood with her back to him,
waiting for the relief his absence would bring. ‘What’s the matter
with you now? Eh? Cat got your tongue?’