Settling the Account (19 page)

She sniffed again. ‘I don’t care if he does
break my arm. I don’t,’ she insisted, though no one had spoken to
contradict her. ‘I won’t go back to the house today, anyway. I’ll
just run off and hide in the bush for the night. Me dad’ll probably
get drunk tonight. He might forget about breaking my arm,’ she
added in a small voice.

‘She means it, Lizzie,’ Frank put in. ‘He
was halfway to breaking her arm yesterday because she answered him
back.’

Lizzie glared at him. ‘I’d just about
believe you two’ve cooked this up between you.’ But Frank could see
the concern mixed with her irritation. ‘Haven’t you got any work to
do, Frank Kelly? I’ve had enough of you hanging about getting under
my feet.’

Frank hovered in the doorway. ‘I suppose I
should get on with—’

‘Yes, you should,’ said Lizzie. ‘We’ve got a
lot to do here. Off you go—and I don’t want to see you back before
lunch-time. You’re not to come in tracking footprints all over my
wet floor.’

‘What about my morning tea?’

‘Too bad about your morning tea,’ Lizzie
said. ‘Well, I might put some scones and a pot of tea out on the
verandah for you later. I can see I’m going to be too busy with
Maisie to stop for a bite myself.’

Humility was the safest course. Frank let
himself be ordered out of the house without protest.

He obediently stayed out of the house all
morning, though he cast many anxious glances towards it whenever
his work took him nearby. When Lizzie at last called from the back
door to let him know lunch was ready he rushed up at once, arriving
in the kitchen slightly breathless.

He stopped short in amazement. Maisie’s hair
had been combed and coaxed into an order he would not have thought
possible, and she now had a half ponytail tied with a pink ribbon.
She was wearing a much-mended dress he vaguely remembered having
seen on Maudie the previous summer. It hung loosely on Maisie’s
gaunt frame, but compared to the rags she had arrived in it was
like a ball gown. Her face shone with cleanness. She sat at the
table with Danny on her lap, holding a mug of milk for the
three-year-old.

‘Lizzie, you’re a marvel,’ Frank said.
‘Doesn’t she look nice? You look really good, Maisie.’

‘Don’t scowl at Mr Kelly like that when he
pays you a compliment.’ Lizzie admired her handiwork before turning
to Frank. ‘Yes, she looks a lot better, all right. I should hope
so, the trouble she gave me! I’d just as soon try bathing one of
the cats as clean her up again.’

‘I didn’t like it when you pulled my hair,’
Maisie grumbled.

‘I only pulled it because of all the knots.
I washed it for her—I had to catch her and hold her head under the
water before she’d let me. And then I had to threaten her with the
belt so I could comb it. I gave her a good stand-up wash, and she
smells a lot better now I’ve burnt that dress she came here in.
That old one of Maudie’s is too big, but it doesn’t look so bad.
Stand up, Maisie, and show Mr Kelly what your new dress looks
like.’

‘No,’ Maisie muttered, glowering at
Frank.

‘Don’t be silly. Come on, stand up.’

Lizzie reached out to lift Danny from
Maisie’s lap. At her sudden movement, the girl flinched and cringed
away. ‘Stop that,’ Lizzie said sharply. ‘She does that whenever I
go near her, Frank. All I’ve done is wave the belt at her a couple
of times.’

‘She’s not used to you yet.’ Frank slid his
arm around Lizzie’s middle and gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Will
you show me your new dress, Maisie? I’d like to see it on you.’

Maisie stared, seemingly fascinated by the
sight of his and Lizzie’s easy closeness. ‘All right.’ She stood
up, and turned around when Lizzie told her to, all the time keeping
carefully out of reach.

‘You look nice, Maisie,’ Frank said. He
studied Lizzie anxiously for any sign of weariness, but if anything
she seemed exhilarated by her skirmishes of the morning.

Lizzie slipped from his hold to sit down at
the table with Danny on her lap.

‘Has Maisie been helping you all right?’
Frank asked.

Lizzie cast a glance at the girl. ‘Well,
Maisie’s learned a lot of things this morning. She’s learned that
floors get scrubbed—’

‘It wasn’t even dirty,’ Maisie said.

‘And I intend to see it stays that way.
She’s learned how to use a scrubbing brush. I
think
she knew
what a bucket was before. Let’s see, what else? She’s learned how
to use a range—’

‘I never seen one of them before,’ Maisie
put in more brightly.

‘She burned her arm on the top of it because
she didn’t know it was hot. She didn’t make a fuss, though. And
she’s learned how you wash vegetables
properly
.’

Lizzie glanced back at Maisie, then quickly
plumped Danny on Frank’s lap. She reached out and grabbed hold of
Maisie’s wrist just as the girl was lifting a handful of meat
towards her mouth. ‘And now she’s going to learn how to use a knife
and fork,’ Lizzie said, forcing Maisie’s hand back down onto the
plate. ‘
And
that we say grace before meals in this
house.’

Frank said grace, then Lizzie ignored
Maisie’s scowls and muttered complaints and insisted that the girl
pick up the utensils lying neglected on either side of her plate.
Supervising Maisie’s use of the unfamiliar tools meant lunch took
much longer than usual, but, as all Lizzie’s children except baby
Rose had learned, she was quite prepared to keep the whole family
waiting until one recalcitrant member had realised the error of his
or her ways.

When lunch was over at last, Frank persuaded
Lizzie to walk outside with him while Maisie cleared the table.

‘Has she been any use at all to you?’ he
asked. ‘I hope she hasn’t just been a nuisance. I did it for you,
you know, getting Maisie around here.’

‘Oh, she’s just what I needed,’ Lizzie said,
her voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Another little girl who needs
looking after. Except this one’s barely house-trained.’

‘I’m sorry, love. I’d better take her home
tonight and tell her pa you don’t want her back. If I tell him it’s
nothing to do with Maisie, it’s just that you don’t want anyone to
help you, he shouldn’t give her a hard time.’ Especially, he
thought to himself, if he sweetened Kieran Feenan’s mood with ten
shillings instead of the three he had promised. ‘She’s had a good
feed, and you’ve given her a decent dress, so she hasn’t done too
bad out of it.’ But he could not help suspecting that, even with an
unexpected windfall, Kieran would find an excuse to take out his
anger on the defenceless Maisie.

‘Don’t be an idiot, Frank. Do you think I
want to send that waif home to get her arm broken? You said
yourself he’d do it. He might take a swing at you, come to
that.’

‘I don’t want to have her here if she’s just
going to make more work for you.’

‘Oh, one more child to look after isn’t
going to make much difference. Anyway,’ she relented, seeing
Frank’s worried face, ‘she wasn’t too bad. She scrubbed as if her
life depended on it once I showed her how. And she seemed quite
fond of the little ones.’

‘She doesn’t seem to like me much,’ Frank
said.

‘She’s scared of you, anyway. I wouldn’t be
surprised if she thinks you might interfere with her.’

‘Eh? What’d I do to make her think
that?’

Lizzie pulled a face. ‘I’ve an idea that
child has seen a lot of things a girl her age has no business
knowing about. Goodness knows what goes on in that house. Whatever
it is, she doesn’t have much time for men, I think.’

‘But… I never went near her.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, she’ll get used to you.
I’m going to have to tell her to keep her mouth shut around the
children, though—I won’t have them hearing that sort of talk.’

‘So you’re definitely going to keep her on,
then?’

‘I’ve already said I will—don’t make such a
fuss about it, for goodness sake. She doesn’t seem a bad girl, even
if she is bog Irish.’

Frank drew her close to his side. ‘You’re a
wonder, Lizzie. I hope she’ll be a help to you, though. That’s what
I got her for, not for you to look after her. I’ve wanted to get
you a servant for ages.’

‘Servant, indeed,’ Lizzie snorted. ‘She’ll
be all right, I expect.’ She glanced back at the house. ‘I’ll say
this for her, anyway—that girl certainly can scrub.’

August 1898

By the time winter was showing the first
signs of giving way to spring, Maisie’s regular presence in the
Kelly house was taken for granted by the whole family. She had lost
much of her skittishness in Lizzie’s company, and to Frank’s relief
she had learned not to back away in fear whenever he came within a
few feet of her.

Lizzie had got into the habit of setting
aside a generous portion of breakfast for Maisie on the three days
a week the girl came. Maisie also had lunch with the family, as
well as plenty of Lizzie’s baking at morning and afternoon teas,
and the sharp edges of her gauntness softened as the months wore
on. She still had a deceptively frail appearance, and it was clear
that she was unlikely ever to achieve the sturdiness of Lizzie’s
children, but she no longer looked half-starved.

As well as being slightly built, Maisie was
tiny. Maudie towered above her by several inches, despite being two
years her junior. It was the contrast between the two girls that
led Lizzie to study her oldest daughter in an increasingly
speculative way.

‘Maudie’s starting to develop,’ she told
Frank one evening.

‘Develop what?’

‘A bosom, of course. Haven’t you
noticed?’

‘She’s not!’ Frank said in amazement. ‘She
can’t be, not at her age!’

‘It’s only a couple of tiny little bumps,
but it’s starting, all right. Not all girls start developing that
young—she takes after me for that,’ Lizzie said, a touch of pride
in her voice. ‘I was early, too.’

‘Trust you to be. I never knew girls started
that young, though,’ Frank said. ‘A little thing like Maudie.’

‘Not as little as all that. She’s twelve
now, you know. She’ll be able to leave school this year if she
passes the Standard Four exam.’

‘That’ll be good, too—she’ll be able to give
you more of a hand. Twelve, eh? Gee, the time slips away. I
remember the day she was born like it was yesterday.’ He reached
out to take Lizzie’s hand in his, smiling at the memory of becoming
a father.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts
getting her bleeding before too long,’ Lizzie commented.

‘She can’t be due for that,’ Frank
protested. ‘Not my little Maudie!’

‘Well, it’s hard to say. But I don’t think
it’ll be more than a year or so before that young Miss starts. Mind
you, there’s Maisie gone fourteen and no sign of it—her chest’s
flat as two fried eggs, too. She hasn’t even started getting any
hair down below yet.’

‘Lizzie!’ Frank remonstrated. ‘You shouldn’t
be telling me all that stuff about Maisie! She’d be really
embarrassed if she knew you’d told me that.’

‘But she doesn’t know, does she?’ Lizzie
pointed out. ‘And you’re not likely to tell her.’

‘I should think not! Heck, I won’t know
which way to look next time she comes.’

‘Don’t be so silly. She won’t know I’ve told
you, so she won’t be worried. Anyway, I think it’s a disgrace.’

‘What is?’ Frank asked.

‘Maisie, of course. Fancy letting a girl get
to fourteen without doing anything about seeing that she grows up
decent. She was more than half wild when she started coming here.
It took me weeks to teach her to so much as wash herself properly—I
don’t think the girl knew what soap was for till I got her in hand,
let alone having any decent manners.’

‘You’ve done wonders with her since. She’s
turning into a real young lady.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Lizzie said
doubtfully. ‘But she’s certainly more fit for polite company now.
She doesn’t eat with her fingers any more, and I’ve taught her not
to scratch her private parts when there’s other people around.’

‘She never did that in front of me.’

‘Think yourself lucky, then. I had to throw
out a few batches of biscuits she’d helped me with when I caught
her doing that—I didn’t fancy letting anyone eat them. It took a
few whacks across the knuckles with the wooden spoon to get her out
of the habit. Mind you, she probably doesn’t get as itchy these
days, not now she’s got clean drawers to put on.’

‘Poor little mite, going all those years
with no one to look after her properly. Our girls are pretty lucky,
eh?’

‘Yes, they are,’ said Lizzie. ‘I think it’s
a mother’s duty to make the best of her daughters.’

‘You don’t need to worry about ours. They’re
all pretty neat already.’

‘That doesn’t mean they couldn’t be better.
I’ve been thinking about Maudie just lately—it’s time I did a bit
of work on that girl.’

‘How do you mean? There’s nothing wrong with
Maudie.’

‘She’s growing up, Frank. I’ve got to do my
best for her, you know. Otherwise before you know it she’ll be
fifteen or sixteen and it’ll be too late.’

Lizzie’s words would have sounded ominous to
Frank if they had not been so ridiculous. ‘Too late for what?’ he
asked. ‘You make it sound like something awful might happen to
her!’

‘Too late to see that she gets the right
sort of husband, of course. It’s nothing to laugh about.’

‘Lizzie, she’s twelve years old! She’s only
a little girl.’

‘She won’t be twelve for ever, will she? It
doesn’t hurt to think about these things.’

‘I’ll tell you this,’ Frank said, suddenly
serious, ‘if I so much as see a man looking at her with anything
like that on his mind, he’ll get a kick where it’ll do him most
good. I’m not going to have anyone hanging around my little
girl.’

‘You needn’t think I’d allow any of that
sort of mischief. Amy was only fifteen when her troubles started,
and the old people all thought she was too young for them to have
to worry about. I’m going to keep a good eye on all my girls, don’t
you worry about that.’