Settling the Account (30 page)

‘She would’ve been hurt if Pa had done that.
Poor Tom, though, you know how he takes things to heart. I hope
they’ll all get on together.’

‘Tom needs to stick up for himself with her
a bit better. It was good to see him standing up to her
before.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Amy said. ‘And I think she
got a surprise, Tom saying he wanted to go with her. Maybe she’ll
appreciate him a bit more.’

‘Maybe.’ John sighed wearily. ‘I tell you
what, it would all have been a lot simpler if Pa had lasted a few
more years. Harry and me are going to miss the young fellows,
specially with milking. Still, it can’t be helped. I’ll get Boy on
to it—he’s a bit young to be doing the morning milking, but he’s
big for his age, he should be right. And Harry says Dolly’ll be
finishing school this year, he’ll get her on to the milking twice a
day then, too. They won’t be as fast as Tom and George, but we’ll
muddle along somehow.’

He walked to the back door with Amy, and
caught hold of her hand when she stood on tiptoe to kiss his
bearded cheek. ‘Amy, just because Pa’s gone, I wouldn’t want you to
think anything’s changed here for you.’

‘How do you mean?’ Amy asked, puzzled by his
sudden solemnity.

‘I know Pa must have said this to you, and
I’m saying it too—if you ever want to come back home, you’ve got a
place here.’

‘John, you’re as much of a worrier as Pa
was,’ she scolded him affectionately. ‘Anyway, my home’s where my
boys are. That’s where I belong now.’

‘Well, if it ever gets too much for you, you
just remember you’re welcome here. We’ll have plenty of room now,’
he added with a grin.

‘Only until the next baby arrives,’ Amy
reminded him. ‘Or maybe the one after that.’

John shrugged. ‘I don’t know, we don’t have
them as fast as all that. Not like Harry and Jane, anyway—you know
he’s talking about building on to his place again?’

‘That’ll be the third time!’

‘I know. I’ll get roped into helping him,
too. He can wait till winter, though. Anyway, Amy,’ he added,
serious again, ‘there’s always room here for you, whatever
happens.’

‘Thank you.’ She kissed him once again,
laughing at the tickling of his beard. ‘You’re an awful lot like
Pa, you know.’

The walk back to Charlie’s house gave Amy
time to get her thoughts in order, and to adjust a little to the
astonishing fact that from now on she would have money of her own.
Never again would she have to ask humbly to be allowed to spend a
few shillings on fabric for a dress, then be faced with the
alternatives of a curt refusal or grudging permission for which she
would be expected to be pathetically grateful. Perhaps… perhaps she
would even be able to afford to buy herself some new books. It
would be up to her to decide just what to do with the money. And
that, she knew, was exactly what her father had intended.

David had not yet returned from school, and
Malcolm seemed to be keeping out of his father’s way, but Charlie
came into the kitchen moments after Amy’s own arrival, before she
had had the chance to go into her room and change out of her good
dress. She pulled on an apron over her mourning gown and buttered
scones for their afternoon tea while she waited for the kettle to
boil.

Charlie sat at the table watching her. ‘How
did it fall out? How’s he left the land?’

‘He’s left the farm to John and Harry,’ Amy
said, not looking at him. ‘And Tom and George are going to get some
money when they come of age.’

‘Mmm,’ Charlie said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose
that was the best way to sort it out, with having the two
families.’

‘Pa thought it was the right thing to do.’
She arranged the scones on a plate. ‘Tom and George are going to
move into town with Susannah. Pa’s left her money so she’ll be able
to rent a house.’

Charlie grunted, clearly losing interest in
the subject.

Amy put the plate on the table, and crossed
to the range to fetch the teapot. She gripped the handle of the
heavy pot so tightly that her knuckles whitened as she carried it
to the table. Only for the briefest of moments did it occur to her
that she might keep her own bequest a secret. Better to get it over
with now than risk Charlie’s finding it out from someone else.

‘Pa’s left me some money, too.’ She set the
pot down on the table, the thud serving to punctuate her
announcement.

‘What did he want to do that for?’ Charlie
asked, startled.

‘Because he loved me.’ She stood and faced
him rather than taking her own seat. If she remained standing, he
would not tower over her.

Charlie made a noise of disgust that showed
what he thought of such sentiment. ‘How much is it?’

‘I’m to get ten pounds a year.’

‘Every year?’

Amy nodded.

‘That’s not bad. It’s not a hell of a lot,
but it’ll come in handy. There’s a few things I can do with that.’
A look of smug satisfaction settled over his face. ‘Aye, a bit of
cash will come in handy, all right. I might look into getting a
new—’

Letting him speculate on all the ways he
could use her money would only make him angrier when he found out
the truth. ‘It’s my money, Charlie.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that supposed to
mean?’

‘Pa wanted me to have that money, so I’d
have something of my own. It’s not yours to spend, it’s mine.’

‘Stop talking your bloody rot! You’re my
wife—you’ve no business saying what you will and won’t do with
money. I’ll have the law onto you if you try keeping it from
me.’

‘The law says a woman can have money of her
own, whether she’s married or not. It didn’t used to be that way,
but they changed it so that men couldn’t take their wives’ money
off them. You can’t have mine.’

‘You…’ He gathered breath for the assault.
‘You thankless little bitch! All the years I’ve provided for
you—fed and clothed you, kept a roof over your head, with precious
little out of you in return. And now you’ve the chance to be a bit
of use, you’ve the gall to say you won’t do it! You’ve no right!’
He thumped on the table, spilling milk from the jug with the force
of his blow.

Amy stared coolly back at him, the firm
conviction that she was in the right sustaining her calm. ‘You’re
not going to spend my father’s money on whores.’

‘Thankless, good-for-nothing little bitch,’
he flung at her, but there was more of self-pity than anger in his
voice. ‘If you’d do your duty by me there’d be no need to waste
money on dirty whores. Don’t you go throwing that in my face, or
I’ll show you—’

‘No, you won’t, Charlie,’ she said, her
voice calm. ‘Not if you want me to stay, anyway. Though if I’m as
useless as all that, perhaps you’d be better off with a
housekeeper—you’d have to pay wages then, of course.’

He dropped his gaze from hers, and rended a
scone savagely with his teeth.

‘I’ll clothe myself from now on,’ she said,
taking her chair at last. ‘I doubt if you’ve ever spent more than a
pound or two in a year on clothes for me, but I’m happy enough to
pay for my own now. I don’t really see how I can pay for my share
of the food, when it mostly comes out of the garden or from the
animals, but if you want I’ll pay a share of the bill at the
store.’

‘No,’ Charlie said sullenly. ‘I’ll not have
the storekeeper poking his nose in my business, laughing behind his
hand when he sees my wife waving her money around.’

‘Just as you wish, then.’ She took a cloth
and wiped up the pool of milk around the jug.

Charlie shoved his chair back from the
table, this time toppling the milk jug completely. ‘Damn you and
your haughty ways,’ he snarled. ‘I’m going out to the cows—they’ve
more sense than you, at any rate.’

Amy began mopping up the fresh batch of
spilled milk, and did not answer.

‘I’ll maybe be going into town tonight,’ he
said, clearly hoping for a reaction.

But Amy went on mopping up milk,
acknowledging his announcement with a brief nod. ‘Just as you wish,
Charlie.’

November 1900

The debut of Lizzie’s soirées was severely
delayed by Jack’s death, which plunged the whole family into
mourning for many months. Lizzie then held a few musical gatherings
for her own branch of the family, knowing better than to ask Amy to
abandon deep mourning before a decent time had elapsed.

It was more than a year after her father’s
death before Amy was persuaded to attend a soirée, the first that
was to have guests drawn from a wider sphere than the Leith and
Kelly families.

‘You want to go to a
what
?’ Charlie
said when Amy asked permission. ‘Talk sense, for God’s sake,
woman!’

‘A soyree, Lizzie calls it, but I don’t know
if that’s the right word or not. She says that’s what Susannah told
her it’s called. It’s just a sort of evening tea—or afternoon, I
think, I know Lizzie’s had one or two in the daytime over winter. I
think everyone just sits around and talks, and listens to the
piano.’

‘Sounds a load of nonsense. Night time, you
say?’ Charlie said suspiciously. ‘I’ll not have you going out after
dark by yourself.’

‘It stays light till quite late—I could be
home before it was really dark if I hurried.’ Amy saw his face set
into stubborn lines, and knew that a refusal was looming. ‘Lizzie
invited you, too,’ she said, trying another tack. ‘She said you can
come if you want.’

‘What would I want to be listening to some
silly girl playing the piano for?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘There’ll be
men there, will there?’

Amy’s heart sank a little. ‘Yes,’ she
admitted. ‘Frank, of course. And maybe Uncle Arthur, and
Bill—Lily’ll be doing most of the playing, because she knows more
songs than Maudie. I’m not sure who else.’

‘All men with their wives there, then?’

‘I think so.’

‘Will they have a decent drop to drink?’ he
asked, a glint of enthusiasm showing. ‘I was thinking I’d maybe go
into town tonight—there’d be no need if Kelly’s laying it on.’

‘No, Lizzie said they only have tea at
soyrees.’

‘Serving men tea,’ Charlie grumbled. ‘Must
be a womanish lot if they’ll put up with that.’

‘May I go, Charlie?’ Amy asked, turning the
discussion back to the main purpose.

‘No, you’re not going out by yourself at
night. I don’t want you wandering around in the dark.’

Amy had been uncertain whether she wanted to
go at all; Charlie’s refusal made the outing appear more desirable.
‘What say I took Dave with me?’ she asked. ‘It’d be nice for him to
come, he gets on well with Joey and Beth. And I wouldn’t be going
out by myself then.’

‘Suppose you couldn’t get up to much
mischief if he goes with you,’ Charlie said, clearly becoming bored
with the subject. ‘All right, go off and sit with a lot of giggling
women. See you get your work done first, mind. And you’re to be
home by nine o’clock.’

He would not be home himself till long after
that, Amy knew. But nine o’clock was late enough to keep David out,
and it would be for the best if the boys were safely in bed and out
of sight when Charlie came home from an evening’s drinking. She
thanked him with the best show of meek gratitude she could muster,
and began to look forward to the unusual luxury of an evening out.
Having David to herself on the trip to and from Lizzie’s would make
it even more of a treat.

She contrived to serve the evening meal half
an hour earlier than usual, so that she and David were away by soon
after six o’clock. She sat behind him on the patient Brownie’s back
(David had inherited the pony when Malcolm graduated to a bay of
sixteen hands) with her arms around David’s waist, enjoying the
warm feel of his body against hers. This was to be her first outing
since leaving off deep mourning. When she glanced down at her
skirts it was strange to see herself clad in pale yellow cotton
instead of the familiar black cloth she had worn for a year.

They arrived at Lizzie’s house to find
themselves well and truly the earliest of the guests, and in the
midst of a flurry of activity, and Amy realised she had had no need
to be in quite such a rush.

‘Oh, good, you’ve brought Dave with you,’
Lizzie said. Amy felt the bulge of Lizzie’s latest pregnancy when
they embraced, and a downward glance showed her that Lizzie’s state
was visible to a moderately sharp-eyed observer. ‘I can do with
another boy helping. Mal hasn’t come, has he?’

Amy shook her head. ‘No, he said he’d have
an early night.’ David gave her a swift glance, then turned away,
but not before she had seen his expression. It told her what she
had already guessed: Malcolm had no intention of staying home that
evening. She tried to comfort herself with the reflection that
Malcolm probably had enough sense to stay away from whatever hotel
his father was likely to be drinking in.

‘That’s all right, Dave’ll do. Dave, you and
Joey carry those chairs through to the parlour, then you can help
your Uncle Frank—he’s moving the sofas for me. Beth, open the door
a bit wider for them. That’s the way.’

David was loaded down with two kitchen
chairs and sent off to the parlour before he quite realised what
was happening, while Amy hung her cloak on a hook behind the
door.

‘Lizzie, you’ve got so much food!’ she
exclaimed. ‘How many people are coming?’

‘Hmm? About seven, I think, not counting
children. Maudie, fetch me another plate for these cakes. Let’s
see, there’s you, of course, there’ll be Bill and Lily, Tom’s
bringing Aunt Susannah, and I’ve asked two teachers out from town.
Teachers can all play the piano, see, so they can spell Lily when
Maudie’s not playing.’

‘No fellows,’ Maudie grumbled. She carried a
plate to the table and began arranging small cakes on it. ‘What’s
the point of having a soyree with no fellows? That’s what
I’d
like to know.’