Settling the Account (43 page)

The boys went off to bed as usual, to be
roused in the early hours by Amy. The three of them crept out of
the house and over to the horse paddock. Amy stood shivering
slightly in the chilly night air while David helped his brother
catch the horse and get its bridle on.

Malcolm and David shook hands a little
self-consciously, then Amy hugged him before he mounted and reached
down for the bag David held out. ‘Now, remember,’ Amy whispered,
‘you’re to leave your horse in Mr Moody’s paddock, and tell him
your pa’ll come in and collect it later in the week.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Malcolm said with a trace of
impatience. ‘Don’t go on about all that.’ She and Malcolm had
argued off and on for several days about the horse, with Malcolm
protesting that the horse was his and he had the right to take it
with him. Amy had argued equally strongly that Charlie most
certainly considered the horse to belong to him, and would be even
angrier than he was going to be over Malcolm’s defection if the
horse went too. Anyway, she pointed out, she had given Malcolm
extra money to make up for his lack of a horse. After a few days of
this, Malcolm had surprised her by abruptly ceasing to argue and
agreeing to leave the horse behind.

‘Well, I’ll see you fellows later, then,’
Malcolm said, his excitement audible even through his whisper.
‘Hope the old man doesn’t give you too much trouble.’

‘Bye, Mal,’ David said, raising his hand in
a half wave. ‘Have a good time over there, eh?’

‘Take care, Mal,’ said Amy. She reached out
her hand towards his leg. But she had left it too late, and Malcolm
was already beyond her reach.

She put an arm around David’s waist and drew
him close. They stood together, listening to the hoof beats fading,
until they could no longer hear anything but their own
breathing.

‘It’s going to be funny without Mal,’ David
said. Amy heard a wistful note in his voice.

She put her other arm around him and
squeezed, enjoying the warm feel of his body against hers.

‘Yes, it’ll seem strange not having him. The
time’ll go quickly, though, I’m sure it will. A year’s not as long
as all that.’ Amy took a deep breath of the cool night air and felt
a sense of peace settling over her. ‘I’ll tell you one thing,
Dave—it’ll be quiet without him, anyway.’

*

When daylight came and Malcolm did not
appear at milking time, David managed through vague, evasive
answers to give his father the impression that his brother had
simply slipped out in the night and David did not know exactly
where he was. Charlie drew his own conclusion: that Sergeant Riley
had made good his threat to lock Malcolm up the next time he caused
trouble in the town. He grumbled loudly that he would ‘teach that
boy a lesson’ when Malcolm appeared again.

Amy said nothing until she was sure Malcolm
must be safely away on the boat, then she produced the farewell
note she had had to badger him into writing.

‘This was in the boys’ room—it’s in Mal’s
writing,’ she said, trying to convey an ignorance of the contents
as she handed the folded sheet to Charlie. She had eventually had
to write the note herself, with Malcolm copying her writing word
for word in his own clumsy scrawl. The note was terse, saying only
that Malcolm had enlisted and was off to fight. ‘I hope you will be
proud of me one day,’ it ended. Amy had struggled to get Malcolm to
write those words.

‘It’ll make it a bit easier for Dave if you
write a proper note to your father,’ had been the argument that
finally persuaded him. ‘Your father’s going to be angry over all
this, and it’ll be Dave who gets the worst of it. If you can make
your father just a tiny bit less wild, he mightn’t be as hard on
Dave.’

Charlie raged loudly against Malcolm’s
desertion, roaring threats against the boy that would have
frightened Amy if Charlie had not been impotent to carry any of
them out. He ranted more loudly than ever when he found that
Malcolm had, after all, taken the horse with him. There were dark
threats for a day or two of ‘getting the law onto the young bugger
for horse thieving,’ but Amy knew it would come to nothing. Even if
Malcolm had not already left the country, Charlie was not going to
expose himself to Sergeant Riley’s open scorn by admitting that the
boy had once again made a fool of his father.

‘His name will not be mentioned in this
house,’ Charlie announced. ‘He defied me, and he’ll pay for it.
He’s no son of mine while he carries on like that.’

In a melodramatic illustration, he took the
photograph of himself, Amy and the boys from the mantelpiece and
flung it into the empty fireplace. Amy rescued it when Charlie had
gone outside, and put it on the chest of drawers in her bedroom
where it would be safe from any further grand gestures by
Charlie.

The rule that Malcolm’s name not be
mentioned did not seem to apply to Charlie; he raised the subject
of the boy’s disgrace several times a day. But Amy and David both
knew better than to disobey him; they were careful not to refer to
Malcolm within Charlie’s hearing, nor to show any reaction to even
the more outrageous of his threats.

Charlie’s outbursts gradually subsided into
intermittent grumbling. He scowled and swore, and threatened David
with dire retribution if he so much as thought about following his
brother to the war; but as the fury of the first few unpleasant
weeks diminished, Amy began to suspect that Charlie was almost
enjoying his sense of outrage. He was the wronged father, burdened
with a thankless son, and one day his son would see the error of
his ways.

‘That boy didn’t know when he was well off,’
became a familiar refrain. ‘He’ll learn. Now he’s gone off with
those bloody English generals, he’ll see what a damned fool he’s
been.’ Amy and David knew to keep quiet during such litanies; it
was not their opinions that were wanted, merely their presence as
an audience.

‘He needn’t think I’m taking him back,
either,’ Charlie often continued. ‘Not till he gets down on his
knees and begs me to forgive him. Aye, I’ll not take him back till
he does that.’

A look of satisfaction tended to creep over
his face at this point, rather spoiling the intended effect of a
bitterly wronged parent. Charlie was convincing himself more and
more, Amy knew, that Malcolm would come back as the penitent
prodigal son, pathetically grateful for Charlie’s goodness and
ready and eager to be everything his father wanted of him. She
hoped that when the year was up she would be able to persuade
Malcolm into a sufficiently meek demeanour.

But that was a whole year away, and in the
meantime Malcolm was safe. It was an odd way to think of war, she
knew; but then hers was an odd family. Until they settled their
feud, Malcolm was in more danger from his own father than from some
nebulous enemy.

In any case, the war seemed to be going
well. In the two and a half years since it had begun Amy had never
taken much interest, but now she avidly followed the details of
every skirmish. She gathered up the newspaper as soon as Charlie
discarded it, and when he was safely out of sight she and David
would study the columns of war reports, discussing each item and
speculating aloud on whether or not Malcolm might have been at any
of the engagements reported. If Charlie gave them no opportunity to
read the news in peace during the day, sometimes she would creep
into David’s room after dark. They would read the newspaper by
candlelight, then whisper to one another of the adventures they
imagined Malcolm might be having.

‘See this bit about the New Zealand fellows
galloping around guarding that train?’ David said one night. ‘I bet
Mal’s doing stuff like that. Racing around all over the place,
keeping the Boer fellows away. No one rides better than Mal.’

Amy was more interested in the fact that the
soldiers seemed to have seen no sign of the enemy, reinforcing her
conviction that Malcolm was safer in Africa than he had been at
home. He had perhaps had more opportunity for fighting in Ruatane’s
main street than he was getting over there. But the riding, she was
sure, must be all Malcolm could have wished for.

‘He must be just loving it,’ she murmured.
‘Galloping for miles and miles like that. It’s just what he wanted
to do.’

‘He’s lucky,’ David said, and Amy was
surprised to hear something like longing in his voice. ‘It must be
fun doing all that.’ His voice, already a whisper, became almost
inaudible. Amy was unsure whether she had heard the next words
properly: ‘I wish I could.’

She put the candle down carefully and gave
David a searching look. ‘You wouldn’t really go away and leave me,
would you, Davie?’

‘No. Not till Mal comes back, anyway. Maybe
I could go over there for a bit then.’ The eagerness in his voice
gave Amy a pang. ‘Then Mal can look after you. I wouldn’t want you
to be here by yourself with Pa.’

Amy laughed softly, and laid her head on his
shoulder. ‘It’s not me who needs looking after, it’s you boys.
There’s no need to worry about me. Anyway, you’re much too young to
go off to war—even Mal wasn’t really old enough, you know.’ She was
comfortably certain the war would be over well before David was old
enough to follow in his brother’s footsteps.

‘I know it’s hard for you with Mal away,’
she whispered. ‘Your pa hasn’t been easy to get along with, has he?
Thank you for being so good about it, darling.’

She felt David shrug. ‘He’s all right, I
suppose. Just grumpier than he used to be. If I don’t say much, he
doesn’t take much notice of me.’

That was the best David had ever hoped for
from his father, Amy knew: to be ignored. Even that small
expectation had been harder to achieve since Malcolm’s departure,
with David thrust into his father’s attention far more than usual.
It was fortunate that David was blessed with a placid nature; he
had had more need of it lately.

But Malcolm was safe. Amy was so convinced
of this that she felt not the slightest hint of concern on the May
afternoon when Charlie had an unexpected visitor.

She was working in her vegetable garden at
the time, pulling weeds from between the rows of carrots, and
Charlie was repairing a piece of harness in the shed nearest the
house.

‘What does that bugger want?’ she heard
Charlie grumble. He had discarded the harness and was walking
towards her. Amy looked up from her weeding to see Sergeant Riley
coming up the track on his black horse. ‘If that boy’s been getting
in trouble I’ll bloody well—Dave!’ he shouted. ‘Get over here!’

David was a paddock away, feeding chaff to
the two draught horses. ‘Can I just finish doing this?’ he called
back. ‘I won’t be long.’

‘It won’t be anything to do with Dave,
Charlie,’ Amy said. ‘It’s probably nothing to do with us at
all.’

She could hardly have been more mistaken. As
Sergeant Riley pulled his horse to a halt in front of them, Amy was
puzzled to see how discomforted the policeman appeared. He
dismounted and stood looking from Amy to Charlie, chewing at his
under lip.

‘Afternoon, Stewart,’ he said at last. ‘Mrs
Stewart.’ He raised his hat to Amy, but instead of putting the hat
back in place he held it to his chest. ‘I’ve…’ he trailed off
awkwardly, then began again in an oddly formal tone. ‘I’ve some
unpleasant news for you. Unpleasant,’ he echoed, looking down at
the ground for a moment before fixing his gaze on Charlie.

‘It’s about your son.’ Amy saw Charlie dart
a glare across the paddock to where David was still feeding the
horses. But the strangeness of Sergeant Riley’s manner had already
told her that this was no high-spirited indiscretion of David’s the
policeman had come to report. Coldness crept through her.

‘It’s Mal,’ she said in a whisper.

Sergeant Riley’s eyes flicked to hers. He
looked away as if unwilling to confront what he saw there. ‘I’m
afraid so,’ he said, his eyes apparently focussed on a point
several feet behind Charlie. ‘I’ve had a telegram just this
morning.’

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and
pulled out a piece of paper. ‘It was the enteric fever that took
him—it’s taken a lot of the boys. He… passed away a week ago, but
the news is a while getting back to us.’ He lifted his gaze from
the telegram, and for a brief moment his eyes looked straight into
Amy’s.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That boy drove me
half distracted, but I’d never have wished anything like this on
him.’

He turned to Charlie, who had neither moved
nor made a sound since Sergeant Riley’s announcement. ‘He was a
brave lad. You should be proud of your son.’

Amy saw Charlie give a slight shudder, as if
dragging himself back to awareness of his surroundings. He stared
at the telegram Sergeant Riley held out to him, but made no move to
take it.

‘I’ve no son of that name,’ he said, his
voice no more than a hoarse whisper. ‘He defied me. He’s no son of
mine. I’ve no son.’

He walked towards the house with an unsteady
tread, the telegram fluttering to the ground as Charlie turned his
back on it.

Amy was vaguely aware that Sergeant Riley
was speaking to her, but she could make no sense of the sounds; not
through the thick fog filling her head. She stumbled after Charlie,
half running to try and catch up to him, scarcely noticing that
Sergeant Riley was mounting, eager to escape; nor that David had
finished with the horses and was walking over to where the telegram
lay abandoned.

‘Charlie,’ she called, but he ignored her.
‘Charlie, wait.’

She went into the kitchen in time to see
Charlie going through to the parlour, clutching a whisky bottle in
one hand. He jarred against the doorpost, then went staggering on
into his bedroom.

‘Don’t, Charlie,’ she begged. ‘Don’t shut me
out. I want to talk to you about Mal. We have to talk. Charlie!’
Her voice came out as a ragged scream. ‘He’s my son too!’