The Tartan Touch (10 page)

How much hate can you put into the word darling? I longed to creep away, out of the dining room, and leave them to it, but there was Mary to consider. Mary, whose beauty caught at my heartstrings, and who writhed with embarrassment every time her mother opened her mouth.

“Mother!” she protested now.

“How like Donald you are,” her mother smiled at her. “You wouldn’t care a rap if I starved to death, would you?”

“You know I would,” Mary answered. “But it isn’t very likely, is it?”

“Isn’t it?” Margaret snapped. “How could you possibly know, cocooned in comfort as you are here?” One look at Mary’s face told me that this, somehow, had to be stopped. I took a deep breath and forced a smile to my face.

“Are you clever at mathematics?” I asked of no one in particular. “The men were asking me what the odds were against two pennies both landing the same way up.

There was a frozen silence
.

“I thought you never gambled,” Mary said in a suffocated voice.

“But this isn’t gambling,” I explained eagerly, having very nearly convinced myself. “It is more—more a mathematical problem.”

“And how much money did you lose?” Andrew asked, his voice as steely as his eyes.

“I d-didn’t,” I stammered.

“Perhaps he should have asked how much you won?” Margaret said with a light laugh
.

“It was a discussion,” I said with dignity. “Besides,” I added, “I couldn’t have wagered any money because I haven’t got any!”

“Wow
!”
said Margaret. “That hurt!”

“But of course you have money,
mo
ghaoil
,” Andrew said very gently.

I gave him a stricken look. I had not known! I had been so stupid! I stared at him, tongue-tied and devastatingly aware that I would go penniless all my life to hear him call me ‘my dear” in Gaelic every now and then.

“Of course you have!” Mary chimed in. “No grazier’s wife is exactly poor these days
!”

“Then where is it?” I asked, reasonably enough in my own opinion.

Andrew scraped back his chair. “We’ll talk about it in the office,” he said quietly.

“Just now?” I said.

“Why not? I can’t have my wife without a bawbee in her pocket, now can I
?
”

I blushed, as I always did when he looked at me in quite that way. He made me
feel
very small and inexperienced, and more than a little stupid.

“You’d better look out, Andy,” Margaret called out, “She’ll bleed you dry, if you don’t watch her!”

How could she? I wondered bleakly. Couldn’t she tell that I wouldn’t touch a single piece of Andrew’s money if I didn’t have to?

“Shut up, Mother!” Mary rasped, angrier than I had ever heard her. “Kirsty isn’t like that!”

“No?” Margaret said lightly. “But then you don’t know the little daughter of the manse as well as I do, do you?”

There was a long silence in the office. I was seated on a polished chair, opposite Andrew, with the desk, as big as a football field, between us.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you, Andrew,” I said uneasily
.

“Why didn’t you ask for some money?” he asked me, I twisted my fingers together. “It didn’t occur to me,” I muttered. “What would I spend it on here?”

He looked at me in silence. I gulped, wishing that I knew what he was thinking.

"Besides,” I went on, for anything was better than that awful silence, “it’s Fraser money and I’m—I’m a MacTaggart!”

“On temporary loan to the Frasers,” Andrew reminded me.

“Ay,” I admitted, “but there was nothing in the bargain about money!”

“Don’t be silly, Kirsty.”

I relapsed into silence. Perhaps I was being silly, but if he thought that I’d willingly accept money from his hands, except for my immediate needs, he had another thought coming.

“I should have explained it to you,” he went on quietly. “I opened an account for you at the bank in Cue by letter on the day we got married. There’s a hundred dollars to your credit there now, and a further hundred dollars will be paid in cm the first of every month—”

“Oh no!” I said, aghast
.

“It’s usual for a man to make his wife an allowance,” he reminded me with a hint of a smiles

“Your
wife
, yes,” I said.

“Well then?”

I eyed him steadily. “I am not your wife,” I told him. “As I said before, it takes more than some words from a minister to make a woman a wife. And so I’ll earn any money I have, like any other person who’s working for you.”

He was very angry then.

“But you are my wife!” he stormed at me. “And while you’re my wife, you’ll behave as I expect my wife to behave
.
Is that understood?”

I quailed in the face of his wrath. “I won’t take your money!”

There was another lengthy silence. I bit my lip, sure that in a moment I was going to cry.

“I reckon that one of us is going to have to give in,” he said at last. “How do you think you’re going to manage without any money?”

I didn’t know. My father had left me nothing, that I knew, but my needs were few and I couldn’t imagine having to spend out more than a few dollars a month. But nearly fifty pounds! What did he imagine I would do with such wealth.

The silence stretched endlessly on.
“
What arrangement did your father have with you?” he asked finally.

I shrugged my shoulders. “He gave me what he could every week,” I whispered. “I managed with that.”

“Nothing for yourself?”

I shook my head. The tears were a knot in my throat that I could no longer swallow. “He had little enough,” I said,

Andrew’s face tightened. If he was going to be angry again, I thought, I couldn’t bear it!

“
A hundred dollars isn’t a very big sum,” he said slowly. “I suppose it amounts to rather less than fifty-four pounds—”

“Fifty-four pounds!” I exclaimed. My eyes flashed. “You can keep your fancy sums! It wouldn’t be honest to take a sum like that—”

His face relaxed into a broad smile. “Don’t you know that Mary has twice that amount?”

The tears I had been so valiantly keeping back burst the barricades and cascaded down my face. I wiped them away angrily with the back of my hand.

“But she’s a Fraser,” I objected, my voice muffled by my efforts to stop my greeting. “She has an interest in the property.”

“While my wife has none?”

It scarcely seemed the moment to remind him, yet again, that I was not his wife, except in a legal, and strictly temporary, sense. He made a sound of complete exasperation and stood up.

“What will you accept?” he asked me.

I sniffed dismally. “I don’t know!” I wailed.

“Oh, Kirsty, Kirsty, what am I to do with you?”

“You could pay me wages for my cooking,” I said. “Not all the time, of course,” I added hastily, not wanting to seem greedy. “But while the shearers have been here, you would have had to hire a cook, wouldn’t you?”

He laughed. “Too right I would!” He sat down at the desk again and scribbled a few figures on a piece of paper. “I reckon I owe you about ninety dollars on the two weeks,” he said, his voice warm with triumph.

“
What
?”

“Forty-five dollars a week,” he said. “Cheap at the price
!
”

I thought he was teasing me. It would be like him, I thought, to take his revenge for my independence by turning my own words against me.

“How—how much would you pay a cook?” I asked suspiciously.

“Forty-five a week at the very least!” He looked amused. “It’s nothing to what a fully-fledged shearer can ea
rn.
”

“Is that so?” I said. “How much would he be earning?”

“Maybe a couple of hundred a week.”

I gasped. This was riches indeed.

“Then I’ll accept forty-five dollars for each of the last two weeks,” I told him.

“Good,” he said.

“If you’ll put it in the bank for me,” I went on, “I can save it until I need it.”

“Quite,” he agreed. “And now we can discuss what I ought to pay you for keeping the house when you’re not cooking for the whole mob as well.”

I coloured angrily. “That’s no more than my duty,” I said.

“And you don’t reckon to be paid for your duty?” he sighed
.

I shook my head violently, not meeting his eyes because I didn’t dare.

“Your duty,” he informed me loftily, “is to obey my wishes as well as keep my home, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.” My mouth felt dry. I had a horrid feeling that I was going to lose the battle—as I always would with Andrew.

“In Australia,” he went on implacably, “every worker is considered worthy of his hire. I’ll pay you twenty dollars a week. Okay?”

“It’s a terrible sum of money!” I said, much agitated.

“Terrible!” he mocked me.

“But if you say I must—”

“I do,” he insisted coolly. “I’ll pay you weekly in advance.” He unlocked a drawer in his desk and counted out twenty dollars into my hand. “And I shall expect you to remind me if I forget!”

I swallowed, meekly nodding my head.

“If you don’t,” he went on grimly, “I’ll—” He sought for the right word and triumphantly found it—“I’ll
skelp
you, so help me!” he said.

Margaret spent the afternoon resting. I took her her tea in the sitting room as soon as I had finished brewing the men’s tea and taking it to them in the sheds. I spent a long time making it look as attractive as possible on the tray. I had cut some fresh cucumber sandwiches and had made a special batch of scones in the hopes that they would remind her of home.

“I want to speak to you,” she said, as I put the tray down by her elbow.

“Yes, Mrs. Fraser?”

She frowned at me. “Perhaps you’d better sit down,” she suggested. “And don’t call me Mrs. Fraser. Andrew says we all have to play this ridiculous charade of his, so it really isn’t very suitable.”

“No,” I said.

“You’d better call me Margaret,” she went on indifferently.

“Thank you,” I said demurely.

She gave me a quick look, I think because she suspected I was laughing at her. “This must be quite a change for you, living here?”

I waited for her to go on, helping myself to one of the cucumber sandwiches I had made for her.

“Mary seems to like you,” she said abruptly. “It’s a lonely life for a young girl, stuck out on a station like this, but Andrew won’t listen to anything that I may say, of course!”

I finished my sandwich thoughtfully. “Andrew is a fair-minded man,” I reminded her.

She laughed. “I can’t think what makes you think so!”

“He’s very fond of Mary,” I said carefully. “He wouldn’t do anything that he thought would harm her. I think
th
at’s why you’re always welcome here—”

“Meaning that he’d hardly ask me for myself?” She took a sip of tea. “Thank you very much!”

“Oh no!” I smiled nervously, cursing my unruly tongue. “I meant only that you have a special place here as Mary’s mother.”

“Is that what he told you?” she asked me curiously.

“He didn’t have to,” I denied.

“I thought not! Andrew dislikes me almost as much as my husband ended up by doing. Donald was quite determined that I should have no influence on Mary at all, if he could help it—”

“But that isn’t right!” I protested. “You’re Mary’s mother!”

She looked suddenly humble and unsure of herself. “I believe you really mean that,” she said.

“I do,” I said simply.

“Well, well,” she murmured, “It will be nice to have an ally in the Fraser camp!”

“I hope you’ll stay a long time,” I managed, wishing that honesty had more to do with charity than it had in her case.

“Perhaps I shall,” she drawled. “I’ll stay until Frank Connor comes home anyway.”

I wondered why she should be interested in the man, but then Andrew had said that he was very rich and maybe it was that that drew her. And with Andrew’s twenty dollars burning a hole in my pocket, who was I to judge her?

I jumped to my feet, picking up the tea-tray as I went.

“Where are you going now?” she complained. “Don’t you ever sit down and relax, my dear?”

“I haven’t the time,” I said, trying to hide my eagerness to escape back to the kitchen where I felt more at home. “I must start the evening meal. The men will be gone tomorrow,” I added. “It will seem strange without them.”

“Speaking for myself,” said Margaret, “I can’t wait! The smell of wool makes me feel quite ill!” She looked up and smiled suddenly. “But then it’s all money, isn’t it? And Fraser money at that!”