Settling the Account (65 page)

He appeared to notice for the first time
that Amy was not answering. ‘I never wanted to go there. It was
your stupid idea.’

‘I know it was,’ Amy said. ‘You’re right, it
was silly of me. I wanted to see the others, that’s all. And I
thought you might enjoy talking to the men. I’m sorry, I won’t
suggest it again.’

‘I didn’t want to go and see his cows,’
Charlie said. ‘Offering me his arm like I was an old woman! Bloody
cheek.’

‘He was only trying to help. He meant
well.’

‘Smart bugger. One miserable mug of beer,
that’s all I got! Miserable sod.’

Amy almost felt she would have managed to
get angry with Charlie if she had not been quite so tired and
disappointed. ‘Well, it’s more than any of the other men got,
Charlie. No one else got any beer at all.’

That seemed to make him think. Charlie was
quiet for some time, as if mulling over the idea.

‘Who was the little lass?’ he asked a few
minutes later. ‘The one that brought me the beer?’

‘That’s Beth. She’s Lizzie’s third, she’s
the next one down from Joey.’

‘She’s not a bad lass,’ Charlie said, and
from him, Amy knew, that was high praise indeed. ‘She’s got a wee
bird in a box. She showed it me. Says she found it under a hedge
and she couldn’t find its nest. She’s rearing it so she can let it
go again. Funny little lass.’

‘Beth’s like that. She likes looking after
animals that aren’t well. She’s always been good at looking after
Lizzie’s little ones, too.’

Charlie grunted, his attention wandering.
‘Who’s that sour-faced bitch?’

‘I don’t know who you mean,’ Amy said, aware
of the tightness in her voice. She could guess easily enough who
had attracted Charlie’s censure.

‘That one you were talking to. Wouldn’t be a
bad looking woman if she didn’t go around with that scowl on her
face.’

‘She doesn’t usually look like that. I think
she’s quite pretty.’

‘One of your relations, is she?’

Amy shook her head. ‘No, she’s Lily’s
cousin. Her name’s Sarah, and she’s my friend.’
And I don’t know
when I’ll ever see her again
.

‘Sour-faced bitch,’ Charlie repeated. Amy
made no reply.

They drove on in silence until they reached
the track up to Charlie’s cottage. The sight of the paddock full of
potato plants brought the problem Amy had been brooding on for
weeks full into her awareness.

‘The potatoes are coming on well,’ she
remarked, careful to sound calm.

‘Aye, they are. Should be a good crop.’

‘There’ll be a lot to harvest this year. An
awful lot.’ She glanced over at Charlie, but he was looking
straight ahead at the track, refusing to meet her eyes.

‘I don’t know how I’m going to manage it,’
Amy said quietly. Still he said nothing, just stared straight
ahead, but she saw the corner of his mouth begin to twitch
convulsively. ‘The potatoes, Charlie,’ she pressed on, knowing the
subject had to be faced sooner or later. ‘I don’t think I can—’

Charlie turned on the seat and glared at
her, his eyes wide and staring. ‘I’ll get my own bloody potatoes
in,’ he said, his voice rasping as if he were forcing the words out
with difficulty. ‘I’ll not be in this state much longer. I’ll get
them in!’

Amy closed her eyes for a moment. ‘All
right, we won’t talk about it. We don’t need to worry about them
for another month or so, anyway.’

‘Think I’m useless, do you?’ His voice was
taut, the words barely audible for all the force Amy sensed behind
them. ‘Think I’m bloody useless?’

‘No, I don’t think that at all. Let’s not
talk about it.’

Charlie opened his mouth, but no words came
out. His jaw hung slack, and his eyes stared blankly, then his head
and one arm began twitching. Amy reined the horse in and took hold
of his shoulders.

‘Charlie? What’s wrong?’ She shook him a
little. ‘I’m sorry I started on about the potatoes, I won’t talk
about them again. Charlie!’

He twitched again, then gave a shudder. Amy
watched awareness creep back into his eyes, followed by that
familiar mixture of fear and confusion.

Amy held him tightly by the shoulders,
fearing that he would slump to the floor of the gig if she let him
go. ‘Did it go black in your head again?’ she asked softly.

Charlie frowned. ‘Aye, it did.’ The words
came out slurred, as if his tongue had grown too thick for his
mouth. ‘Black.’

‘Don’t talk, then. You’re all right now, but
let’s sit quiet for a minute, then I’ll get you up to the house and
put you to bed.’ She kept an arm around his shoulders until he had
regained some sort of control over the muscles that had gone lax so
abruptly.

‘There, that’s better, isn’t it?’ Amy said,
carefully letting him go when she felt him take his own weight
again. He looked at her for a moment, then his eyes dropped to his
lap.

Amy followed his gaze and saw the wet patch
that was spreading across his trousers. ‘Never mind. I’ll get your
nightshirt on you as soon as we’re inside, you’ll be all right
then.’

She gave a brief glance back at the potato
paddock, then looked in the other direction to where the cows were
already lined up close to the gate, eager for the relief that
milking would bring them.

‘I hope you filled up on cakes and things
down at Lizzie’s,’ she said wearily. ‘Dinner’s going to be very
late tonight.’

*

‘Did he start playing up?’ Lizzie asked in a
low voice as Amy and Charlie were moving away.

‘Yes, he did,’ Frank said, matching her
quiet tone so that not even Rosie, who was swinging on the veranda
rail close to them, could hear what they said. ‘Amy said to tell
you she was sorry she left in a rush like that.’

‘Ooh, that man,’ Lizzie muttered. ‘Trust him
to cause trouble. Honestly, he begrudges her a bit of pleasure with
all the running around she does after him.’

Frank glanced across at Sarah Millish, and
was startled to see the force of hostility in the look she was
directing towards Charlie. Her knuckles showed white with the
ferocity of her grip on the verandah rail.

He gave Lizzie a nudge. ‘Look at that,’ he
murmured, indicating Sarah with a small gesture. ‘She looks as if
she’d like to throttle Charlie.’

Amy and Charlie disappeared around the
corner of the house, and Sarah relaxed visibly. She turned towards
Lizzie and Frank as if she had sensed their eyes on her.

‘What a perfectly dreadful man,’ she said,
her voice clear though it shook a little.

‘Yes, he’s horrible,’ Rosie chimed in. ‘No
one likes Uncle Charlie.’

‘That’s enough, Rosie,’ Lizzie said. ‘You
get on and start picking up those plates before someone treads on
them. Hurry up, girl.’

She turned towards Sarah with a stern
expression. ‘I try to bring my children up to be polite to adults,
Miss Millish. It makes it difficult when they hear other people
being rude in front of them.’

Sarah met Lizzie’s gaze steadily. ‘I’m very
sorry if I caused you offence, Mrs Kelly. I certainly had no
intention of doing so. But I’m afraid that some men make it
difficult to keep within the bounds of correct behaviour. I shall
have to try harder.’

She nodded to Lizzie, turned on her heel
with a swish of skirts and went into the house.

‘You were a bit hard on her, weren’t you?’
Frank said as he watched Sarah disappear. ‘I’ve heard you say worse
things than that about Charlie.’

‘Not in front of the little ones,’ Lizzie
said. ‘Anyway, that’s different. She’s no business passing remarks
when she’s only known us a few months. It’s just because she
doesn’t like men, you know.’ She saw Frank’s quizzical expression,
and pulled a face. ‘Oh, I suppose you’re right, I did bite her head
off a bit. Charlie got on my nerves, playing up like that. That’s
the trouble when he’s around, he always gets everyone upset.’

‘I wouldn’t like to have to live with him,
that’s for sure.’

Lizzie frowned. ‘I didn’t like the look of
him. I don’t know how Amy’s managing.’

‘That leg of his didn’t look too good,’
Frank agreed. ‘I suppose he must be making do somehow, though.’

‘I don’t know about that. Amy said he wasn’t
too bad, but I’m not so sure. I think I’d better go up there
sometime and see how she’s getting on.’

‘She mightn’t want you butting in.’

‘It’s not butting in at all,’ Lizzie said
sharply. ‘It’s just keeping an eye on her. Don’t you talk to me
about minding my own business—I did that for years with Amy, and
look what happened. He could have beaten her to death while I was
minding my own business.’

‘Shh,’ Frank murmured, glancing around to
see if anyone had heard, but the noise of conversation was loud
enough to cover Lizzie’s words. ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s
pretty hard for me to give Charlie the time of day when I think
about what he did to her. But that was a long time ago, eh? She
seems to manage him pretty well now—and he’s in no shape to hurt
her.’

‘She’s too soft hearted, that’s the trouble.
Oh, I don’t know, I suppose I might worry a bit much about her.
Still, I’ll have to have a talk with her sometime.’

Frank made a noncommittal noise vaguely
expressive of approval. He was fond of Amy, but he did not want
Lizzie getting herself upset over her. Especially now, when she was
probably carrying a baby. He did not relish the idea of having to
dissuade her from ill-advised outings to Charlie’s farm. Dissuading
Lizzie from anything was never easy.

February – March 1905

Amy looked up from her plate and saw that
Charlie was struggling to manage his fork. She had dished up what
she could only loosely call a stew; the advantage of the meal was
that she could leave it simmering on the range while she was out on
the farm rather than in its flavour.

‘Meat’s a bit tough,’ Charlie grumbled. His
speech had become more slurred lately, though Amy was not sure how
aware of it he was himself.

‘Is it? Maybe I didn’t cook it long enough.’
She did not suggest that it was because Charlie had less control of
his jaw these days, though she had seen signs of it since his last
attack. ‘Shall I cut it up smaller for you?’

Charlie shook his head. ‘I can manage,’ he
said, casting a resentful glare at her.

‘Whatever you want,’ Amy murmured. It would
have been far easier to look after Charlie if he had not had
erratic bursts of trying to be independent. Caring for him was much
like having a small child in the house again; except that she had
never had to worry about offending her babies’ dignity.

Charlie stabbed at a chunk of meat. His hand
twisted awkwardly, the heel of his palm pitched onto the edge of
the plate, and plate and food toppled to the floor.

He stared in disbelief at what had been his
dinner a few moments before, helpless frustration in his face.
‘Look what it’s done,’ he said across the table to Amy. ‘That’s my
bloody dinner there!’

Amy stood up and carried her own plate
around to him. ‘Have mine.’ She scraped what she could of Charlie’s
dinner off the floor onto his plate and emptied it into the slops
bucket. The stew had left a sticky pool, adding to the undeniably
grubby state the floor had got into lately. But she had enough to
think about without fretting over a grubby kitchen.

‘What’ll you have?’ Charlie asked, looking
doubtfully at the food that had appeared before him.

‘There’s more potatoes in the pot, I can
fill up on them.’

‘You need meat,’ Charlie said. ‘You can’t
work without meat in your belly.’

‘I’ve had quite a bit of it already. Anyway,
those gristly bits are too hard for me to chew—leave those bits if
you don’t want them, just eat the vegies.’

‘Why can’t you chew the meat? What’s wrong
with you?’

‘It’s my teeth. I’m missing a couple at the
back, I notice it when the meat’s tough.’

Charlie stared at her, his mouth working as
if he were puzzling through a problem. ‘Teeth,’ he echoed. ‘The
ones I knocked out.’

‘That was a long time ago, Charlie,’ Amy
said quietly. ‘Best to forget all that. Come on, eat up your dinner
and I’ll open a bottle of stewed fruit for afters.’

Charlie was clearly troubled. He reached for
the clean fork Amy had given him, but his hand trembled too much
for him to take a firm grip. ‘I don’t want it,’ he said, shoving
the plate away.

‘Yes, you do,’ said Amy. She pulled a chair
close, cut the meat and vegetables into small pieces, and lifted a
forkful to Charlie’s mouth. ‘Eat up.’

He scowled defiantly at her for a moment or
two, then slumped back further in his chair, opened his mouth, and
let himself be fed like a baby.

It took a long time to feed him, giving him
time to chew each mouthful before offering the next. When the plate
was empty at last, Amy noticed Charlie’s jaw was still working
convulsively, his face twisted with the effort.

She had noticed this apparent discomfort
after eating since his most recent attack, but this was the first
chance she had had to observe it at close range. Now she saw that
one side of his jaw no longer worked properly, leaving a pocket of
food wadded uncomfortably in a corner of his mouth.

‘Let me,’ she said. She reached a finger
into his mouth and cleared out the food, dropping the wad onto his
empty plate. ‘You should have told me you were having trouble with
that.’

Charlie’s jaw eased visibly. ‘A man doesn’t
want to be looked after as if he’s a baby,’ he muttered.

‘I know, Charlie. But you must let me help
you with things like that. I don’t mind doing them for you. Just
until you feel a bit better.’

She dished up the leftover potatoes onto her
plate and bolted them down, then opened the promised bottle of
fruit and served them both a generous helping. Charlie insisted on
eating the dessert unaided.