A Second Chance (19 page)

Amy tried to take comfort from Sarah’s
assurance. But she had been shaken by the realisation that
Auckland, particularly the circles in which Sarah moved, was a much
smaller place than she had thought.

*

Beth propped her head on one hand and looked
across the pillows at David. He was lying on his back, eyes
half-closed and wearing a contented smile. She trailed a finger
down the side of his face. He caught her hand and pulled on it,
overbalancing her so that she fell forward onto his chest. Her lips
found his, and they met in a long, lingering embrace.

Their resolution to wait until they were
married had lasted barely a week, till the next rainy day had
reminded them of how pleasant hours trapped indoors could be. Beth
could not remember which of them had first suggested using the bed,
but as soon as they had tried it they had both agreed that even
with its ancient, lumpy mattress it was much to be preferred over a
hard floor.

That had been some weeks ago now, and the
bedroom had become a familiar place to Beth. They generally went
there as soon as she arrived at the house each morning; she teased
David that she had at last found something he would choose over
eating.

She lifted her head to free her mouth for
speech. ‘We’d better get up, or we’ll never get anything done
today.’

‘Just a bit longer,’ David coaxed. He
reached up to stroke her hair. His hand slid onto her shoulder and
tugged gently.

‘No,’ Beth said, steeling herself to be
firm. When his hand kept hold of her shoulder, she added, ‘What say
Ma turns up to check how I’m doing the work?’

She felt a jolt run through him. He looked
about guiltily, as if already half expecting his aunt’s doom-laden
approach. ‘Do you think she might?’

Beth took advantage of his distracted state
to extricate herself from his grasp. She sat on the edge of the bed
and smiled at his anxious expression. ‘Not really. Back when I
first started coming here, Ma said she’d be along sometime, but she
only said it so I’d be careful about doing the work properly. She
doesn’t really ride any more, not since she had Benjy, and she
wouldn’t walk this far. I suppose she could always get Pa to bring
her.’ She smiled more broadly at the look of near-panic on David’s
face. ‘Well, that’s one way to get you to think about something
else for a minute. Come on, then, lazy.’ She leaned over and poked
at his arm until he wriggled out of the way.

David got out of bed and began pulling on
his clothes. ‘I don’t know how anyone ever gets anything done, once
they find out about this. I just feel like I want to stay in here
all the time.’

‘Not much chance of that when there’re kids
around,’ Beth said, buttoning up her bodice. ‘They’d be banging
down the door, wanting to be fed.’

‘I suppose. I’m a bit hungry, come to think
of it.’

‘Trust you! I’d better feed you, though, you
need to keep your strength up.’

The kitten was sitting on the floor, looking
as disapproving as only a cat can. Beth had a vague recollection
that it had been on the bed at some point; perhaps it had been
knocked to the floor when matters became vigorous. She scooped it
up and kissed it on the top of its head, promising it a saucer of
milk as apology.

In the kitchen, she cut thick slices from
the fresh loaves she had brought, and spread them generously with
butter and jam. ‘Ma said to do some baking here today, because she
didn’t have any to spare,’ Beth said as she watched David demolish
the bread and jam. ‘I’ll make scones for our morning tea, and some
biscuits to leave with you.’

‘Mmm, scones. I haven’t had them for ages.’
David wolfed down the last piece of bread and stood up. ‘It’s a
good thing you made me get out of bed, I haven’t been round the
cows yet. A couple of them looked just about ready to drop their
calves yesterday.’

‘Oh, I’ll come with you,’ Beth said eagerly.
‘Ours haven’t started yet, and I might be too busy here to go out
with Pa as much as I usually do.’ She took off her apron and
followed David to the porch, where they both pulled on their
boots.

Two of the cows had indeed calved overnight,
and both had produced heifers. Beth helped David look over the cows
and their offspring. Afterwards they walked around the rest of the
herd, checking their health and estimating how long it was likely
to be before the remaining calves arrived.

‘You should write down about those two
calves being born,’ Beth told David as they walked back to the
house. ‘I’ll show you how Pa does it, with the names and which cow
had which calf and all.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that way you’ll know which cows
have the best calves, and which ones turn out to be the best
milkers. That’s how you know which ones to keep.’

David shrugged. ‘They’re all about the same,
I think. None of them are that flash. Still,’ he added more
brightly, ‘I should get in the way of writing it up like you said.
Your pa said I could borrow the bull this year, so I should get a
good lot of calves next season. What’s so funny?’ he asked when he
noticed Beth giggling.

‘The bull. I remember when I was little I
asked Pa what Duke William was doing when he was in with the cows.
He just said the bull was playing with them—I suppose that was true
enough, really.’ She grinned at David. ‘You’ll be worse than ever
if you get watching the bull. Maudie and me heard Ma say that to Pa
one time.’

David snorted with laughter. ‘Did she really
say that?’

‘Mmm. They probably thought we couldn’t hear
them, or we wouldn’t know what they were talking about. We figured
it out later, though.’

She slipped her arm around David’s waist.
‘I’m glad you’re borrowing the bull. It’ll be good if you can get
some better bloodlines in your herd.’

‘Especially with us getting married.’ David
put an arm around her shoulder, and planted a kiss on the top of
her head. ‘Next year with the calves being half Jersey, I’ll try
and keep plenty of them and see if I can build the herd up a
bit.’

‘Only keep the best ones, though. I’ll help
you decide which ones, I know from doing it with Pa.’

When they got back to the house she insisted
that David fetch paper and pencil right away. He returned with his
accounts book, and they used a blank sheet near the end to record
the details of the new calves. ‘You’re to write this stuff down for
every new calf from now on,’ Beth told him.

She glanced at the clock, and was startled
to see how late in the morning it was. ‘Look at the time! I don’t
think I can make you any scones after all. I don’t know when I’m
going to get that baking done, either.’

David looked downcast. ‘Oh. I was looking
forward to scones.’

‘I’m sorry, Davie, but I’ll have to start
getting lunch on as soon as we’ve had our cup of tea. I’m going to
do us a roast today, and there’s spuds to do and pudding and all.
And then after lunch I need to do some cleaning before I get your
dinner on. I shouldn’t have spent all that time looking at the
cows, and writing it up and everything.’

‘I liked doing that with you. It’s better
than going around on my own.’

‘I know, and I like it too, but I can’t do
that stuff and the cooking and everything as well.’ She saw his
disappointment, and considered what she might do to relieve it. ‘If
I’m going to help you with the farm, how about you help me in the
kitchen?’

‘Me?’ David said doubtfully. ‘I don’t know
if I’d be much good at that.’

‘Of course you will, with me telling you
what to do. I’ll just find you nice, easy things.’

Beth found David to be a useful assistant,
as long as she told him precisely what she wanted and was not too
fussy about how things looked. She kept him well away from the
scone dough, knowing that it would be too much to expect him to
give it the light touch it required. But when it came to stirring a
heavy biscuit batter he came into his own, doing it faster and with
a good deal less effort than she would have herself.

‘I bet you’d be good at kneading bread
dough,’ she said, admiring the results of his vigorous work with
the wooden spoon. ‘Just give it a couple more stirs while I grease
the trays.’

The only problem was that when she went to
take the bowl from him there was rather less of the mixture ready
to be baked than she had expected.

‘Ow!’ David yelped when Beth snatched up the
wooden spoon and rapped him over the knuckles with it. ‘What’s that
for?’

‘Don’t eat it all before it’s cooked. You
can lick out the bowl when it’s finished, but you mustn’t go
helping yourself till then.’

‘I only had a bit,’ David grumbled.

‘Well, when you run out of biscuits, just
you remember why there aren’t many.’ But she left a generous amount
in the bowl when she handed it to him ready to be licked out, and
then spoiled the effect of her scolding by helping herself to a
spoonful before passing the spoon over.

She peeled the vegetables herself when she
saw David’s attempt at it, and she knew that her mother would not
have approved of the odd-sized chunks he cut them into, but the
tasks went far more quickly with such congenial company.

They paused in their work to have a morning
tea of scones hot from the oven and dripping with butter, then
David went off to do some outdoor tasks while Beth finished the
lunch preparations. After lunch David dried the dishes as she
washed them, and swept the kitchen floor while she dusted the other
rooms. Later in the afternoon she helped him feed out hay to the
cows, then David in turn helped her prepare dinner.

With the stew for David’s dinner gently
simmering on the range, they kissed goodbye and Beth rode home. It
had been even more fun than usual, she reflected. She and David had
been able to spend most of the day together, and she had enjoyed
being out of the kitchen and working with the animals.

She came into her own kitchen, smiling at
the pleasant memories of the day, to find Maisie banging pots on
the range and scowling at the world in general.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Beth asked,
surprised that anyone could manage to scowl on such a day.

‘I’ve got the cramps bad,’ Maisie grumbled.
‘It’s the blood rag business.’

‘Oh, poor thing. You sit down for a minute,
they’re always worse if you’ve got to stand. You can peel those
spuds while I get the pots going.’

Maisie pulled out a chair and flopped into
it. ‘You and me usually get it around the same time. You must be
about due to get yours.’

‘I suppose so,’ Beth agreed absently. ‘I
seem to be a bit late this month.’

‘Lucky you,’ Maisie muttered.

*

As July wore on, Beth found herself busier
than ever at David’s farm, but enjoying her time there all the
more. There were the new calves to tend, and the milking season was
beginning. Cooking and cleaning were quickly done with David’s
help, and she could spend much of her time out on the farm with
him. They were barely apart all day, whether in the paddocks, the
kitchen, or the bedroom.

It was a delightful routine, and the time
slipped away pleasantly. Beth was guiltily aware that, fond as she
was of her aunt, she was not greatly looking forward to Amy’s
return from Auckland.

‘Ma said they had about a dozen kinds of
cake at some tea party she went to,’ David told her one morning as
he worked his way through a plate of biscuits he had helped her
make. ‘I bet there were none of them as good as these ones,
though.’

‘She goes to a lot of things like that up
there, doesn’t she?’

‘Mmm. Did I tell you she went out on a boat
a couple of weeks ago? A big, fancy sailing one. They were out half
the day on it.’

‘Has Miss Millish got a boat?’ Sarah’s world
seemed so glittering to Beth that she would hardly have been
surprised if told she owned a fleet of yachts.

‘No, it wasn’t hers. Just one of the flash
people she knows.’

‘Aunt Amy’s not going to want to come home,
at this rate!’

She said it lightly enough, but when David
met her eyes she saw his troubled expression. ‘I want her to come
home,’ he said earnestly. ‘But… you know.’

‘Mmm.’ She moved from her chair to his lap,
and laid her head against his chest. ‘It’ll be nice for you to have
company in the evenings again. But I’ll miss being here and
everything.’

His arms closed around her. ‘There’s lots of
things I’ll miss,’ he murmured.

‘Still,’ Beth said, determinedly bright,
‘once Aunt Amy’s home, maybe we can tell them we want to get
engaged. She might help with Ma and Pa—Ma takes a bit of notice of
what Aunt Amy says.’

‘And we can’t ask them till Ma comes home.’
David held her more tightly. ‘I just hope they say yes.’

‘They will sooner or later,’ Beth said,
trying to sound more confident than she felt. ‘And once we’re
engaged we’ll be allowed to be together a lot. They’ll let us go
for walks and things. We’ll be able to see each other every
day.’

‘It won’t be the same as all this, though.
There’s lots of stuff we won’t be able to do any more. Not till
we’re married.’

‘Then we’ll just have to keep on at them
till they let us get married.’ Beth wound her arms around his
waist. ‘And we should make the most of it till Aunt Amy comes
home.’

‘Good idea,’ David whispered in her ear.

*

With so much to do and enjoy, Beth was too
busy over the next few weeks to wonder at her bleeding’s continued
absence. It was only when she saw Maisie rinsing out a bundle of
cotton rags in the wooden tubs near the copper that Beth realised
another month had gone by, and had brought no sign of it. That was
unusual enough for her to consider asking her mother’s advice,
though she would have to wait for a chance to talk to her on her
own.