Settling the Account (56 page)

Lizzie fixed her daughter with a steely
glare, then turned her eyes on Frank. ‘Did you tell her that,
Frank?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing in a way he did not quite
feel comfortable with.

‘Well, yes, I did,’ he admitted, wondering
what he had let himself in for. ‘It’s her big day, Lizzie. I don’t
mind shelling out for a new dress.’

‘See?’ Maudie looked smug.

‘All right,’ Lizzie said, assuming a haughty
air. ‘If my wedding dress isn’t good enough for you, then that’s
your affair. I’ve always looked forward to the day I could see you
wearing that dress, but it seems it’s not to be.’ Her gaze took in
first Maudie, then Frank; her expression spoke of one still
forgiving despite having been wronged. ‘We’ll say no more about
it.’

‘Oh, good,’ Maudie said with exaggerated
relief. ‘I’ve heard enough.’

‘I didn’t know you wanted her to wear yours,
Lizzie,’ Frank said guiltily. When Lizzie still pretended
aloofness, he sat in the chair next to hers and took her hand in
his own. ‘It’s only natural she wants a new dress for her big day,
and I’m not going to have the chance to spoil her for much longer.
Let her have what she wants.’

‘I hope you’re grateful, Miss,’ Lizzie said
in Maudie’s direction, still sounding rather distant. ‘You’re very
lucky to have such a generous father.’

‘I know.’ Maudie put her arms around his
neck and kissed him; this time Frank was certain it was pure
affection. At the same time Lizzie squeezed his hand. The household
was at peace once again.

Never one to dwell on past defeats, Lizzie
set aside any vexation at Maudie’s refusal to wear her wedding
dress and put her energies into seeing that Maudie’s gown would be
the talk of the district. Every illustration Lizzie and Maudie
could lay their hands on, whether engravings from the pages of the
Weekly News
or pictures of Paris gowns from the journals
that Susannah regularly ordered from Auckland, were spread out on
the kitchen table to be pored over and discussed at great length.
Amy was called in to add her opinion, and the three of them
painstakingly reached decisions on fabric, style and trimmings.

Susannah’s advice was sought as to who were
the finest dressmakers in Auckland, and catalogues duly arrived
from the chosen firms to take the place of the newspaper
illustrations in dominating the kitchen table. Even when the dress
had been selected, weeks of correspondence between Lizzie and the
firm of dressmakers were still needed, giving Maudie’s measurements
and settling every detail of the dress’s construction, before
Lizzie could finally announce that things were arranged.

‘They want you to send a deposit before
they’ll start, though, Frank,’ she told him when the last letter
arrived from the dressmakers. ‘Then you can settle up the rest of
it when it’s finished.’

‘Might be just as easy to pay it all now,’
Frank said. ‘How much is it, anyway?’

What he had thought of as a simple enough
question was met at first by silence. He saw Maudie and Lizzie
exchange what struck him as rather shifty glances.

‘You tell him,’ Maudie said to her mother.
The potato she was peeling suddenly seemed to be utterly
fascinating.

‘All right, all right,’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s…’
She began boldly enough, then her voice subsided into a shadow of
its usual self. ‘Twenty-five,’ she admitted.

Frank frowned in confusion. Surely a wedding
dress that had involved so much fuss must be going to cost more
than twenty-five shillings? Comprehension dawned. ‘You mean…
twenty-five pounds?’

‘Guineas,’ Lizzie said faintly.

‘Heck!’ The exclamation was out before he
could call it back.

Maudie let her potato drop to the bench and
crossed to her father. ‘We could make it a bit cheaper, Pa. I could
have a different sort of lace. The sort with silver in it’s the
dearest. I don’t have to have that sort, it’s only that it’s the
prettiest,’ she finished, a plea in her face.

‘You can have a gold-plated dress if you
want, love,’ Frank told her, smiling fondly at her anxious
expression. ‘I don’t mind paying whatever it costs. I just got a
bit of a start, that’s all. I just… well, I didn’t know a dress
could
cost twenty-five pounds. Guineas,’ he corrected
himself before Lizzie had the chance to.

Having accepted the startling fact that a
wedding dress could cost more than a good horse, Frank was mildly
surprised to learn that the rest of the dresses were to be made at
home. And what a lot of dresses there were, he found. A new one for
Lizzie, of course; her role as mother of the bride required
something special. And all three of Maudie’s sisters were to be
bridesmaids, with matching dresses apparently essential.

‘You’d better be a bridesmaid too, Maisie,’
Maudie said. ‘I’m having all the others, so I’ll have you as well.
Four makes a nice, even number, too.’

‘What do I have to do?’ Maisie asked
suspiciously.

‘Nothing much. Just walk along behind me and
help with the veil and things. You can have a new dress.’

‘Can I?’ Maisie looked more enthusiastic.
‘Whose?’

‘What do you mean, whose?’

‘Whose dress can I have? Yours or Beth’s?
Only, when I get one of yours I have to cut lots off the bottom,
’cause you’re much taller than me. Beth’s ones fit better.’

‘One of your own, of course,’ Lizzie said.
‘All these dresses we’re going to be making, it’ll take no time to
run up one for you as well.’

Maisie said nothing, and at first Frank
thought she was indifferent to the idea. Then he saw that she was
sitting quite still, tears trickling down her cheeks.

‘Whatever’s wrong with you, girl?’ Lizzie
asked. ‘Don’t you want to be a bridesmaid? You don’t have to if you
don’t want to.’

‘A-a n-new dress,’ Maisie sobbed. ‘A dress
made s-special for me.’ She sniffed noisily and wiped her nose on
her hand, earning a reproving look from Lizzie. ‘I never had
nothing new before,’ she said to the ring of faces staring at her.
‘Not even drawers or anything.’ She rose from her chair, crossed to
Lizzie and put her arms around her neck. ‘Thanks,’ she said, her
voice muffled against the cloth of Lizzie’s bodice.

Lizzie fished a handkerchief out from her
sleeve and held it over Maisie’s face. ‘Blow,’ she ordered, wiping
Maisie’s nose when the girl had obeyed. ‘No, I don’t want the hanky
back, tuck it up your sleeve. We’d better make you half a dozen
hankies as well, since you don’t seem able to find one when you
need it. Silly girl,’ she said, squeezing Maisie’s thin
shoulders.

Those dresses seemed to take over the house.
For months on end, it was full of lengths of fabric, rolls of lace
and yards of ribbon.

‘Don’t stand on the material!’ a voice would
yell at Frank whenever he entered the parlour. Pointing out that
there was nowhere else to stand earned him a reproachful stare. If
he found himself sitting or standing on a pin (of which there
seemed to be thousands scattered around the house), he would be
told that he should be more careful where he put his feet or
backside.

‘I’ll be glad when this wedding’s over,’ he
grumbled one day as he gingerly removed a pin that had entwined
itself in his sock. The sewing effort had been transferred to the
kitchen to take advantage of the morning light, and Amy had managed
to get Charlie’s permission to join Frank’s womenfolk for a few
hours, making the room even more crowded.

‘I don’t know why you’ve got to get
underfoot all the time,’ Lizzie said, her voice indistinct through
a mouthful of pins as she struggled to get a straight edge on
Rosie’s hem. ‘Oh, keep still for goodness sake, Rosie! I’ll stick
one of these in you if you keep wriggling.’

‘I want to go to the dunny!’ Rosie
complained.

‘Well, you’ll just have to hang on. I’ll
have this pinned in two minutes if you’ll only keep still—Frank,
get off that lace!’

‘I only wanted a cup of tea,’ Frank said.
‘Can’t I have a cup of tea in my own kitchen?’

‘No, you can’t. Take it out on the verandah.
Hurry up, Frank, you’re in the way.’

‘But the kettle hasn’t even boiled yet! I
can’t make it till the kettle’s boiled.’

‘Why’s Richard marrying Maudie, anyway?’
said Rosie, her squirming showing that she had not forgotten her
more immediate problem.

‘Because he loves me,’ Maudie said, looking
up with a sunny smile from her task of pinning lace to Maisie’s
bodice.

‘But why doesn’t he marry
me
? He’s my
doctor, not yours. He never listens to your chest.
I
need my
chest done because I get coughs.’ Rosie frowned in concentration
and summoned up a small cough. ‘See?’ she said triumphantly.

‘Keep
still
, Rosie,’ Lizzie scolded.
‘Frank, what are you doing with those tins?’

‘Just trying to get a biscuit. This tin’s
got nothing in it.’

‘There’s some afghan biscuits in that tin on
the top shelf. Don’t you go dropping crumbs on the material.
Maudie’s the oldest, Rosie. You’ll have a nice young man of your
own when you’re her age.’

‘It’s not fair,’ Rosie whined. ‘She always
gets things first, just ’cause she’s the biggest. He’s
my
doctor.’ She stamped her foot just as Lizzie tried to place a pin,
her movement wrenching the pin from Lizzie’s hand and pulling a
thread in the fabric. She wailed as her mother gave her a hard slap
on the bottom.

Lizzie spat the mouthful of pins into her
hand and put them to one side. ‘Right, I’ve had enough of you,’ she
said above Rosie’s wails. ‘Lift your arms up.’ She tugged the pink
satin dress over Rosie’s head and took the opportunity to plant
another slap before quickly pulling on Rosie’s everyday dress. ‘Go
to the dunny, then you can stand in the corner. And you can stop
that bawling or I’ll go and get the belt.’

‘I want to get married
now
,’ Rosie
grumbled when she was safely out of her mother’s reach on her way
to the door.

‘A good hiding, that’s what you want. Frank,
you’re dropping the icing off that! Take it outside.’

‘I want—’ Rosie began again.

‘None of you other girls are going to get
married before you’re thirty,’ Frank exploded. ‘It’s going to take
me twenty years to get over this bloody wedding!’

‘What a
horrible
thing to say, Pa,’
Maudie wailed. ‘I thought you
liked
Richard.’

‘Take those biscuits outside, Frank!
’
Lizzie shouted.

‘But I want a cup of tea! Can’t I have a cup
of tea?’

‘No! Go away!’

Amy rose from where she was kneeling to pin
Beth’s dress, took Frank’s arm and steered him towards the door. ‘I
think you’d be better off out on the verandah,’ she told him. ‘I’ll
make you some tea when the kettle’s boiled, and I’ll bring it out
with some of those nice biscuits of Lizzie’s. I won’t be long.’

*

By the time Amy came out with a tray a few
minutes later, she could see that Frank was already regretting his
outburst. ‘Thanks,’ he said as Amy set out his cup and saucer.
‘Sorry about that fuss.’

Amy sat down beside him and patted his hand.
‘That’s all right, Frank. It must be getting on your nerves, all
this business with dresses everywhere. Don’t worry, in a couple of
months you’ll have forgotten everything except what a lovely
wedding you gave Maudie.’

‘It’s a bit rough, getting you down here to
help then you have to put up with us all yelling at each
other.’

Amy thought of her own kitchen; of the
mealtimes when she and Charlie might not speak to one another at
all, now that he often had no energy to snarl at her. She did not
make the pretence of seeking his company in the evenings, choosing
instead to sit in her room reading, mending while the light held,
or writing long letters to David, while Charlie sat in the parlour
with his newspaper and a bottle.

‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I like sharing
your family. Even when you yell at each other.’ She poured his tea
and passed the cup to him. ‘Not that you make a habit of it,’ she
added with a smile.

Frank ran a hand over his hair, took a gulp
of tea and slumped back in his chair. ‘I never used to. I tell you
what, I really will be glad when this wedding of Maudie’s is over.
And I’ve got three more daughters to worry about!’ He pulled a
face, then laughed. ‘No, I bet you’re right. It’ll be worth all the
fuss to give Maudie her special day.’

‘I’m sure it will.’

‘Lizzie’s loving every minute of it, too,’
Frank said. ‘Getting it all organised and bossing everyone around.
I think it’s pretty special for a woman when her daughter gets
married.’

The silence between them had grown
uncomfortably obvious before Amy could bring herself to answer. ‘I
suppose it is, Frank,’ she said quietly.

‘Sorry,’ Frank said. ‘I didn’t mean to…
sorry.’

Amy managed a smile with difficulty. ‘Don’t
worry. Lizzie shares her daughters with me, so I’m lucky really,
aren’t I? It doesn’t matter that…’
That I haven’t got any
daughters
. She could not bring herself to say the lie, certain
though she was that Lizzie had kept Ann’s existence secret from
Frank.

‘I suppose…’ Frank trailed away. Amy was
puzzled at how embarrassed he seemed to be. ‘Sorry,’ he finished
feebly.

Maudie broke the awkward moment by appearing
in the doorway.

‘We’ve finished for now, so Ma says you can
come inside if you want,’ she announced to Frank, her sunny
expression banishing all memory of the reproachful look she had
given him earlier. ‘Come and have morning tea, Aunt Amy.’

‘I’d better not, Maudie. I told Uncle
Charlie I’d be back by eleven. I’ll just come in and say goodbye to
your mother, then I’d better hurry. Oh, thank you, dear,’ she said
as Maudie passed a book to her.

‘I liked that one,’ said Maudie. ‘It had a
good story to it. Especially that bit about the mad wife in the
attic—ooh, that was scary!’