Settling the Account (34 page)

‘It’s none of your business, Amy,’ Lizzie
said, her gaze never leaving her daughter’s. ‘Maudie, you can go
back into the parlour now and play some more songs.’

‘I only know those two well enough to play
in front of people,’ Maudie said, sullenness in her voice as her
anger subsided.

‘Then play the same two again,’ Lizzie said
sharply. ‘Then you can say good night to everyone and go off to
bed. You’d better not go to sleep, though, because I’ll be having a
word with you later. Off you go.’

It was time for Amy and David to leave
before Maudie had finished her second recital. Before she went, she
whispered to Frank that Lizzie and Maudie had had a serious falling
out.

*

Even with Amy’s warning, Frank was surprised
when, after all the guests had finally gone, Lizzie said, ‘Stay
here in the parlour a minute, Frank. I want to have a word with
Maudie before I go to bed.’

‘Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’ Frank asked,
thinking longingly of a warm bed and a good sleep.

‘No, it can’t. It won’t take long. Maisie,
just stack the rest of those dishes on the bench for me, we won’t
wash them tonight. Then you can go and tell Maudie I want to see
her.’

Frank sat in the parlour and waited while
Maisie carried the dishes out and Lizzie went off to their bedroom.
A few minutes later he heard voices raised briefly, soon followed
by the unmistakable sound of leather against bare flesh.

‘I’ve finished, Frank,’ Lizzie called. He
left the parlour just as Maudie rushed from her parent’s room. She
careered into Frank and flung herself against his chest,
sobbing.

Frank put his arms around her and stroked
her hair, uncomfortably aware of the budding breasts pressed so
firmly against him. Maudie was growing up more quickly than he
would have wished; she could not be much younger than Lizzie had
been when he had first started courting her. ‘Never mind, love,’ he
said awkwardly. ‘Never mind.’

‘Maudie,’ Lizzie called from the bedroom.
‘Go to bed. You’ve got a big pile of dishes to do in the morning.
And don’t try playing up to your father, either.’

Frank gave Maudie a final squeeze, then
disentangled himself from her embrace and watched her go into the
room she shared with her sisters.

‘What’d you get?’ he heard someone ask in a
hoarse whisper; he recognised the voice as Maisie’s.

‘Mind your own business,’ Maudie answered,
the last word lost in a sob.

Frank went into his own bedroom and closed
the door. ‘Poor little thing.’

‘Rubbish,’ Lizzie said, pulling pins out of
her hair as she spoke. She had already taken off her shoes and
stockings and undone the buttons of her bodice. ‘She’s been asking
for that all evening.’

‘What’d she do wrong?’

‘Oh, all that fuss she made about the dress.
Playing up in front of Aunt Susannah, not to mention those
teachers. And then to come out in the other one like that! And she
gave me some fearful cheek in the kitchen.’ She shook her hair
loose and began sliding off her skirts.

Frank waited for a moment to hear the rest.
‘Is that all?’ he asked when he realised there were no more crimes
to be revealed.

Lizzie stopped undressing for a moment.
‘What do you mean, “all”? That’s bad enough, isn’t it?’

‘Well, I didn’t really follow all that stuff
about the dress, and I know she shouldn’t give you cheek, but… I
don’t know, it just doesn’t seem a lot to get a hiding for.’

‘I think I’m the best judge of that,’ Lizzie
said. ‘If you had your way, that girl would never have had a hiding
in her life. Goodness knows what she’d be like if I hadn’t been
firm with her. The cheek of the girl! Do you know what she came out
with just now?’

She went on without giving him the chance to
speculate, her words punctuated by the shedding of undergarments.
‘I told her we wouldn’t have another soyree for months because
she’d played up like that, and do you know what she said? She stood
there and looked me in the eye, and she said, “That’s not why we’re
not going to. It’s because you’re having a baby.” Did you ever hear
such audacity? I didn’t know what to say for a bit.’

‘But Lizzie,’ Frank said, struggling not to
laugh, ‘it’s true! You told me yourself this’ll have to be your
last soyree till the baby comes.’

‘That doesn’t mean I want a slip of a girl
saying it to me! Honestly, I don’t know where she gets such ideas
from.’ She tugged her nightdress viciously over her head.

‘I suppose she used her own two eyes. She’s
seen you with child enough times to have figured out what it means
when you start swelling up like this.’

He fell abruptly serious when he saw that
Lizzie seemed to be getting in something of a state. ‘Now don’t go
upsetting yourself,’ he soothed. ‘It’s not good for you, with the
baby and everything.’ He stood behind her, slid his arms around
where her waist should have been, and held her till he felt the
stiffness start to relax out of her body.

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ he whispered,
kissing her hair near her ear. He slid his hands down till they
rested on the hard bulge of her belly, wondering if he would be
able to feel the first small flutterings of life there. Lizzie
leaned back against him, her body warm against his. She seemed to
grow warmer and softer whenever she was with child. ‘You’re nice
with a baby in you,’ he murmured.

‘You won’t say that when I’m the size of a
house. Hurry up and get undressed, Frank, I want to go to bed. And
don’t you go getting any ideas, either. I’m too tired.’

‘I’m pretty weary myself.’ Frank gave a
yawn. He got undressed and into his nightshirt as quickly as his
tiredness would allow, then climbed into bed and put the lamp out.
‘I didn’t think they’d all stay so late.’

Lizzie pressed against him, a stray tendril
of her hair tickling his face. She had managed to get into the
centre of the bed, taking up more than half, but Frank had long ago
given up trying to claim a fair share. ‘Neither did I. Amy and Dave
went too early, really, I think Charlie must have told her she had
to. But those teachers stayed pretty late. And as for Aunt
Susannah! I thought she was never going to go. Tom must’ve said
half a dozen times that they should be off.’

‘Then in the end he stood up and said, “Come
on, Mother, we’re leaving now,”
 
’
Frank said. ‘She gave him a bit of a sour look, but she went all
right. I think I would’ve fallen asleep on the sofa if she’d stayed
much longer.’

‘Me too.’

‘She seemed to have a pretty good time.
Being a widow seems to suit your Aunt Susannah.’

‘Mmm,’ Lizzie agreed drowsily. ‘Being a wife
never did, anyway.’

She was quiet for some time. Frank was on
the verge of sleep when she spoke again. ‘You know, that dress
doesn’t fit Maudie very well.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ Frank roused himself to say,
though it was difficult to take an interest in the subject of
Maudie’s clothes at such an hour.

‘Not really. It was all right when I made
it, but she’s getting bigger in the bosom.’

‘Can’t you let it out or something?’

‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll bother. I might give
it to Maisie—she can make it a bit smaller and take the hem up. She
won’t care whether it’s in the fashion or not.’

Frank struggled to clear his head enough to
take in what Lizzie was saying. ‘But wasn’t that what all the fuss
was about? Because you like that dress and Maudie doesn’t?’

‘Don’t worry, Frank, I don’t expect you to
understand about style and all that. Maudie can wear that dress for
another couple of months, then I’ll give it to Maisie.’

‘Please yourself.’

‘Mmm.’ Lizzie pressed more closely against
him. Frank gave up another few inches of bed to her before he
realised what she was doing.

‘Frank?’ she whispered a few minutes later,
this time rousing him from actual sleep.

‘What?’

‘It was a really good soyree tonight, wasn’t
it? It all went off so well. It’ll be good when we can have another
one.’

Frank sighed at the thought of how few hours
remained till he would have to get out of his warm bed. Just now,
an early night seemed a precious thing. ‘If that’s what you want,
Lizzie.’

April – May 1901

It took all Frank’s powers of persuasion to
convince Mrs Coulson to attend Lizzie at the birth of her seventh
child. The nurse protested that she had retired from such work; she
was too old to commit herself to riding out to the farm in the
middle of the night (which was, as she added with the wisdom of
long experience, when most babies in isolated spots chose to be
born); and she was certainly too old to run a household of nine
while Lizzie was bed-ridden.

But Lizzie wanted Mrs Coulson again, and
that was enough to make Frank persistent. He made repeated visits
to her house, countering every argument with one of his own. He
would bring her out to the farm a week or two before Lizzie was
due, so there would be no need for a nighttime dash. The girls
would do all the work; there would be no need for her to do
anything but look after Lizzie.

His visits continued, until finally one day
the nurse flung her hands up in front of her face in a gesture of
defeat and said, ‘All right, Mr Kelly, you win. You’ve worn me
down.’

Frank beamed at her. ‘I knew you’d come
around in the end.’

She smiled back. ‘It was what you said about
Mrs Kelly that did the trick, you know—how you’ll be nervous enough
anyway, but you’d be worried sick about her if she couldn’t have
the nurse she wanted.’

She patted him on the arm as she led him to
the door. ‘Any man who still worries about his wife after seven
babies deserves to have whatever he wants, in my opinion.’

Mrs Coulson found Frank as good as his word
when the time came. She spent a pleasant few days helping Lizzie
with the last of the preparations for the new baby, then little
Kate obligingly arrived a week earlier than expected, and with a
minimum of fuss.

In fact she found the Kelly home even more
pleasant to stay in than on her previous visit, when she had
delivered the now three-year-old Rose. This time Maudie was only
too eager to take over her mother’s role, and Maisie stayed with
the family throughout Mrs Coulson’s sojourn. Beth, too, made
herself useful when she was not at school. Mrs Coulson found the
household functioned smoothly, with no more than a light
supervisory touch from herself.

She enjoyed the company of the children all
day when she was not attending Lizzie and the new baby, and in the
evenings when the little ones were all safely in bed it was
delightful to sit in the parlour and chat with Frank until it was
time for them to retire.

Maudie took advantage of her mother’s
confinement to sit up later than Lizzie normally allowed, insisting
that her self-appointed role as lady of the house gave her the
right. Not to be outdone, Maisie announced that, because she was
older than Maudie, she should be allowed to sit up at least as
late. Mrs Coulson and Frank both took the cowardly way out and let
the girls have their way, only sending them to bed half an hour
before their own bedtime.

It was that last half hour of the day that
Mrs Coulson enjoyed most. Frank was anxious not to disturb Lizzie’s
rest, so he was careful to wait until she was deeply asleep (with
the help of a sleeping draught supplied by the nurse) before he
crept in to join her. That gave Mrs Coulson the pleasure of Frank’s
company in the pleasant lull at the end of the day, and she could
not recall when she had last enjoyed herself so much.

It was more years than she cared to remember
since she had shared a fireside with a man; though Frank reminded
her far more of her sons than of her long-dead husband. She found
it easy to become fond of Frank; so easy that she reproached
herself for becoming soft in her old age. She had let herself get
fond of Charlie Stewart’s little wife, and all that meant was that
she fretted about the poor girl whenever she thought of her.

That was another advantage of staying with
the Kellys, of course: it gave her the chance to see her little
favourite most days. Amy seemed calmer than she had in the past;
certainly the trembling fear of her husband that she had so barely
concealed in the old days had gone. She seemed worried about that
older boy of hers, though she said little enough about it, but such
worries were no rarity in a woman with a boy of fifteen. When Mrs
Coulson looked at Frank, so anxious for his wife’s comfort and so
unfailingly patient with his children, she could not help but wish
gentle little Amy Leith had found such a husband instead of somehow
having Charlie Stewart forced on her.

She tried to keep herself too busy all day
to have time to dwell on such thoughts, though it was hard to find
enough to occupy her in this well-ordered household. In fact her
work seemed so easy, with the most difficult job being to keep
Lizzie from getting up too soon after the birth, that Mrs Coulson
began to feel a little guilty about taking Frank’s money for what
was almost a holiday. There must be something she could do more
useful than a vague ‘keeping an eye on the girls’.

As the nurse moved quietly around Lizzie and
Frank’s bedroom one day, the only sound that of the sleepy
breathing of Lizzie and her new daughter, she thought of a small
task she might perform. That chest of drawers was unlikely to have
had the newspaper lining each drawer changed for several months;
she could not imagine Lizzie had been able to bend down to the
lower drawers recently.

She fetched some paper from the kitchen,
then emptied out each drawer in turn, replacing the old newspaper
with fresh sheets and putting the clothes back as neatly as she had
found them, until she had worked her way down to the lowest
drawer.