Settling the Account (38 page)

Amy had thought that the easing of Charlie’s
restrictions on her own movements might mean his mood was softening
at last, but she soon found she was wrong. Charlie clung
tenaciously to his sense of grievance. He had never been easy to
live with; now he had become almost unbearable.

To Amy it meant being snarled at and abused
more often and with more venom than she had become used to, but
that was no great trial to bear. She wished he would not use such
language in front of the boys, but he did not use any words they
had not heard dozens of times before from him.

David felt his father’s heavy hand more than
usual. In Charlie’s current mood, any perceived slowness to do as
he was told, or the slightest imperfection, real or imagined, in
the way the boy did his work, was liable to earn him a slap across
the head.

But it was Malcolm who was the real target
of his father’s ire. Charlie would not leave the boy in peace; much
of the time he seemed almost deliberately to be goading Malcolm
into earning himself another beating. Whether they were working
together or merely sitting in the same room, Charlie would
constantly berate the boy. If Malcolm answered back in his own
defence, as often as not he got a blow that knocked him to the
ground.

Malcolm would have had even more of such
treatment had he not displayed a level of self-control that at
first astonished Amy. But as she anxiously watched his dealings
with his father, she became aware of the brooding resentment
growing in him. The boy might be saying little, but his feelings
were running a deep and increasingly bitter course.

She watched and fretted, painfully aware of
her powerlessness to do anything to influence either of them. It
was only a matter of time before Malcolm and Charlie had a nastier
falling-out; and all Amy could do was watch and wait.

When it came, the day she had been dreading
seemed at first no different from any other. Over breakfast Charlie
took exception to Malcolm’s surly expression and gave the boy a
clout across the head, but that was no great novelty.

The trouble began soon after Charlie
returned from a visit to town that had taken up much of the middle
of the day. He had decided to go shopping by himself; when she
smelt the beer on him Amy knew he had spent more time at the hotel
than in the store. He had forgotten most of the things she had
asked him to buy.

‘You boys fed out the hay yet?’ Charlie
asked as he sat having a much-delayed afternoon tea. Amy saw the
boys exchange glances, as if daring each other to be the one to
answer. Malcolm gave a quick shake of his head.

‘You told them to wait till you came home,
Charlie,’ Amy put in quietly.

‘Useless pair of brats,’ he grumbled through
a mouthful of scone. ‘Can’t trust you to do anything.’ He pointed
an accusing finger at Malcolm. ‘I can’t trust
you
out of my
sight, boy. You’ve brought shame on this family, you know
that?’

‘Would you like another scone?’ Amy asked,
putting one on his plate without waiting for an answer.

‘It’s a fine thing when a man can’t have a
quiet drink without some clever bastard asking me if I know where
my son is. That’s a bloody fine thing, isn’t it?’ Charlie glared at
the three of them in turn before shifting his attention to the new
scone.

Amy passed one to Malcolm, giving his hand a
surreptitious pat of encouragement as she did so. Malcolm jerked
away from her, the movement knocking the scone onto the table. He
snatched it up, but not before it had left a small trace of jam on
the cloth.

‘Watch out, you useless bugger,’ Charlie
growled. ‘Don’t go chucking your food all over the table.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Amy said. ‘It’s only a
little bit of jam, it’ll wipe off.’

‘I can’t trust you to do anything, can I?’
Charlie said, warming to his theme. ‘You can’t even eat your food
without making a mess of it. What’s wrong with you, boy?’

Malcolm stared down at his lap and said
nothing.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Charlie said, his
voice close to a shout. ‘I asked you a question, boy. What’s wrong
with you?’

The boy raised his eyes for a moment to
glare back at his father, then dropped his gaze again. ‘Nothing,’
he muttered.

‘Nothing! Nothing! You’re a disgrace to me,
you know that? You’re a bloody disgrace!’ Charlie thumped on the
table to emphasise his point. His hand came down so hard that his
tea cup shook, splashing tea into the saucer and from there onto
the table cloth.

The brown stain on the cloth only served to
make Charlie angrier. ‘Now look what you made me do, you little
bugger!’

‘I’ll pour you a fresh cup,’ Amy said,
reaching for the half-empty one. ‘That one must’ve been getting
cold, anyway.’ She was about to grasp the cup when Charlie half
rose in his chair, leaned across the table and gave Malcolm a blow
on the side of his head.

Malcolm snatched at the cloth in a frantic
attempt to catch his balance, the force of the blow almost knocking
him from his chair. The plate holding the remaining scones flipped
its contents jam side down onto the table. At the same time four
tea cups tipped over, one of them rolling off the edge of the table
and crashing to the floor.

Charlie looked at the ruin of Amy’s
neatly-set tea table in silence for a few moments. When he opened
his mouth she expected a fresh tirade, but all he said was, ‘What a
bloody mess.’

Amy began picking up broken china and
mopping away the worst of the devastation. Charlie might have meant
the table and the floor around it, swimming in tea and soggy
scones, or his family; either would fit just as well. ‘It doesn’t
matter,’ she said. ‘I’ll clean it up.’

Charlie stood, and walked a few steps across
the room. ‘Get outside and get that sled loaded up with hay,’ he
told the boys, his back to them as he spoke. ‘Make yourselves
useful for once.’

Malcolm had his hand clutched to his head
where Charlie’s blow had fallen, his face screwed up in pain. He
lowered his hand and stared at his father with a venom that sent a
cold stab of fear through Amy. For a long moment she thought he was
about to spit abuse at Charlie. But David tugged at his sleeve and
Malcolm seemed to think better of it. The two boys went outside
without a word.

Charlie lifted a bottle of whisky from a
high shelf, took a long swallow from it and wiped his mouth on his
sleeve. ‘Bloody kid,’ Amy heard him mutter.

‘You could let the boys feed out by
themselves, Charlie,’ she said quietly. She did not want his
company around the house, but even less did she want her boys
forced to spend the rest of the afternoon with him in his current
mood.

He took another swig before putting the
bottle away again. ‘I don’t want to let that boy out of my sight
any more than I have to. Don’t want him bringing more shame on
me.’

Amy bit back the urge to ask what shame
Malcolm could bring while feeding hay to cows. When Charlie had
gone outside she stood in the doorway and watched until he was out
of sight, the sense of impending disaster growing as she remembered
the look she had seen on Malcolm’s face.

The short days of winter meant the sun was
already close to the top of the hills when Charlie returned to the
house. He came rather later than Amy had expected, and he came
alone.

‘Where are the boys, Charlie?’ Amy asked,
setting out their dinner plates. There was no immediate answer.
When she looked up at his face she saw a small trail of blood
running from the corner of his mouth down into his beard. Her
stomach twisted with a sick fear.

Charlie sat down heavily at the table. ‘He’s
got to learn. He’s got to learn not to cross me.’

Amy closed her eyes for a moment as she
struggled for calm. ‘Where are the boys?’ she repeated. ‘What’s
happened?’

Charlie thumped his fist on the table. ‘The
boy took a swing at me, that’s what happened! He did that one other
time—I warned him then he’d better not try it again.’ He fingered
his cut lip gingerly. ‘The little bugger took a swing at me,’ he
muttered.

‘And what did you do to him?’ Amy asked, her
voice tight with fear and barely-concealed anger. A saint would
have had difficulty putting up with the treatment Charlie had been
giving his son lately; and Malcolm was no saint.

‘Taught him a lesson he’ll not be forgetting
in a hurry. He’ll not be trying that trick again. And don’t you go
giving me your hoity-toity looks, either, woman. I gave the boy a
good hiding, that’s all. You get a move on with my dinner or you’ll
maybe be getting one yourself.’

Amy’s instincts told her to ignore his
bluster, to rush out of the house and go looking for the boys, but
she fought the urge for long enough to dish Charlie’s dinner up and
place it in front of him.

She heard rapidly approaching footsteps, and
was halfway to the back door when David came in, his face taut with
fear and a large, red mark cutting a slash across his cheek.

‘Ma, I think there’s something wrong with
Mal,’ he blurted out, panting a little from his run. ‘He won’t get
up, and he’s making funny noises.’

‘Bawling, is he?’ Charlie said. ‘That’ll
teach him. Let that be a lesson to you, too, boy—you’ll get the
same if you cross me.’

But David did not mean his brother was
sobbing; Amy could see that clearly enough. ‘Show me where he is,
Dave,’ she said. She sat on the doorstep to pull on her boots, then
hurried off with David, doing her best to keep up with his
long-legged trot as he led her down the hill from the house and
across two paddocks.

Malcolm was slumped forward on the ground,
his head on one arm and his other arm flung out to the side. Amy
crouched beside him. Her stomach heaved when she saw the sticky
mass of blood that covered his face, oozing out of the swollen,
pulpy mess that she knew to be his nose only from its position. A
bubbling sound interspersed with odd little choking coughs came
from his mouth. She would have vomited on the spot if she had had
time for such luxuries.

‘He’s choking on the blood.’ She lifted
Malcolm’s head as gently as she could and slid her fingers into his
mouth, reaching around inside to be sure she was clearing it
properly. She pulled out a handful of mucus and half-congealed
blood, and Malcolm took a great gulp of air, followed by a brief
fit of coughing that set a fresh burst flowing from his nose.

Amy laid his head in her lap and stroked his
hair with her clean hand, smoothing down the red tufts Charlie’s
rough attempts at barbering produced, while Malcolm’s breathing
gradually steadied. He gave little sobs of pain with each breath,
but the hideous bubbling sound had faded into something closer to
human. ‘Oh, Mal,’ she murmured as she cradled his head. ‘My poor
Mal.’

‘He’s going to be all right, isn’t he, Ma?’
David asked, his eyes wide and staring.

Amy gave a deep sigh. ‘I think so, Davie.
Not for a while, though. And he’s not going to look the same as he
used to, either. Your pa must’ve hit him really hard this time.
What happened?’

‘He was wild—I’ve never seen Pa that bad. He
was going on at Mal, all that stuff about shame on the family and
everything. Well, he just went on and on, and Mal got fed up with
it—I would’ve, too. He told Pa to shut up, and Pa gave him a
clout—he knocked Mal down, then he went over and got his stick.
Then Mal got up and started yelling and screaming, and he sort of
threw himself at Pa, and he gave Pa a couple of really good
punches.’

‘Not as good as the ones he got back,
though.’

‘No. Pa just stood still for a bit, like he
didn’t know what’d happened, then he started hitting Mal.’ David’s
face clouded. ‘I thought he’d sort of gone mad, Ma. He hit Mal and
knocked him down, then he picked him up and hit him again, and he
just went on and on. He didn’t say anything, just hit him. I tried
stopping him, honest I did—I yanked on his arm and yelled at him to
leave Mal alone, but I couldn’t make him stop.’

‘Is that how you got that?’ Amy asked,
pointing to the red weal across David’s cheek.

David fingered the mark as if registering
its presence for the first time. ‘It must’ve been. Yes, that’s
right, he gave me a crack with the stick when I grabbed his arm.
Then he carried on hitting Mal.’

Malcolm gave a groan and moved his head a
little, trying to raise it, then lay still again. Amy stroked his
forehead. ‘Listen, Mal. I’m going to take you up to the house and
put you to bed now—you’ll have to help me, Dave, we’ll just about
have to carry him. We’ll try not to hurt you, but… well, I don’t
think we’ll be able to help hurting you a bit. We’ll be as quick as
we can.’

She and David each slipped an arm under
Malcolm’s shoulders and hoisted him upright. He gave a short
scream, the sound bubbling out through his blood, but he made no
attempt to resist. He stumbled along between them, Amy and David
taking as much of his weight as they could. David had to stoop as
he walked to try and match his level more closely to Amy’s, as well
as shortening his stride, as they carried their awkward burden back
to the house, up the front steps and into the boys’ bedroom.

Amy put both pillows lengthwise on the
mattress and they eased Malcolm onto the bed, his body leaning
against the pillows.

‘I’ll get him something for the pain,’ she
said as soon as they had settled him. ‘I don’t want to try cleaning
up his face before I’ve put him to sleep. Hold him still, Dave, I
don’t want him to hurt himself.’

She hurried through the parlour and into the
kitchen. Charlie looked up from his plate as she came in.

‘You’ve taken your time. I’ll have my
pudding now.’

‘It’s on the range. You’ll have to get it
yourself,’ Amy said. She dragged a chair over to the high shelf she
kept medicines on and lifted down the laudanum bottle, realising as
she did so that she was the only person in the house not tall
enough to reach the shelf merely by standing on tiptoe; she had
always been careful to keep medicines out of the boys’ reach when
they were small, and the habit had stuck.