Settling the Account (82 page)

Amy chose a path as carefully as she could
with the distraction of being hardly able to breathe from Charlie’s
convulsive grip, but a few steps further on they struck a rough
patch of pasture. Charlie’s foot twisted under him, and before she
could take a firmer hold he had fallen to the ground, dragging her
with him.

David dropped his burdens and helped the two
of them up to a sitting position. Amy was only slightly winded, but
Charlie sat hunched on the ground, refusing to take the hand David
held out to help him stand.

‘I can’t do it,’ he said miserably. ‘I can’t
walk.’

Amy checked him over for injuries. ‘I don’t
think you’ve hurt yourself. You just got a fright, Charlie. Sit
here and rest for a minute, then we’ll try again.’

Charlie shrank away from her touch. ‘I
can’t,’ he repeated. ‘Just leave me be for a bit. Then you can give
me a hand getting back to the house.’

Amy felt tears pricking her eyes at the dull
misery in his voice. She had to persuade him into carrying on with
this outing, but she had no idea how; not when he was so
frightened.

She looked up at David with a mute appeal
for help. His eyes met hers, then flicked to his father and back
again.

‘Can you carry this stuff, Ma?’ he asked,
glancing at the baskets and rugs.

‘I think so. What are you—’

Before she had the chance to finish, David
had bent down and scooped Charlie up in his arms as easily as if he
had been a child. ‘This’ll be better,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘Now, where are we having this picnic, Ma?’

Charlie was so startled at this treatment
that for a few moments he could not speak at all. He recovered his
voice and spluttered his outrage.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?
Put me down, you bloody fool.’

‘I don’t know, we can’t let all that stuff
Ma’s cooked go to waste,’ David said, unperturbed. ‘We’re going
down to the creek aren’t we, Ma?’

‘I thought we’d set it out where those trees
come down close to the bank,’ Amy said, hastily gathering up the
things David had dropped. ‘Can you manage that far, Dave?’

‘No trouble,’ David said. He adjusted his
load slightly, then set off down the hill, ignoring Charlie’s
protests.

Amy had chosen the closest spot to the house
that could provide both water and shade. David lowered Charlie
carefully to his feet and supported him with one arm around his
waist while Amy began setting out their picnic.

As soon as she had spread a rug they sat
Charlie down on it. He seemed so weary that he was barely able to
sit upright. Amy pressed close to him so that she could take a
share of his weight.

Before offering him any food she waited
until he had recovered his strength a little, watching him
anxiously as his chest heaved. The months of forced inactivity had
left him even weaker than she had realised.

Feeding Charlie was a slow business, with
every bit of food having to be broken into smaller pieces so that
he could chew it, though eating outdoors had the advantage that
dropped crumbs did not matter. Amy found she had ample time to eat
her own share while she waited for Charlie to manage each
mouthful.

Charlie was tired again by the time he had
eaten and she had cleared out his mouth for him. She persuaded him
to lie back with his head in her lap, and she and David talked
quietly while Charlie lay resting.

He dozed fitfully for a while, then Amy saw
that his eyes were open and he was listening to their voices.

‘Do you remember us having picnics years
ago?’ she asked. ‘I used to bring Mal down when he was little, so
he could see you.’

‘No,’ Charlie said after a moment’s frowning
concentration.

‘Well, I suppose I didn’t do it very often.
It might only have been the once, now I come to think of it.’

‘I don’t remember that, Ma,’ David put
in.

‘Of course you don’t, Dave, it was before
you were born.’

‘You were carrying him,’ Charlie said
suddenly. ‘You brought the boy down with you, and you said you were
carrying another one.’

David looked away, grinning at Amy’s
embarrassment. ‘No wonder I don’t remember, eh?’

‘So you do remember, then, Charlie?’

‘Aye. It’s come back now.’

Amy studied him for signs that the reminder
of Malcolm might have upset him, but he looked pensive rather than
distressed. He said nothing for some time, but a little later, when
Amy and David next lapsed into silence, he looked up at David and
said, ‘You can tell your brother he can come home if he likes.’

Amy caught her breath and sent David a
silent plea for understanding, but he seemed to sense the right
response. ‘I’ll tell him that next time I’m talking to him,’ he
said.

‘Tell him to hurry up about it,’ Charlie
added.

‘I’ll do that, Pa.’

Charlie nodded almost imperceptibly. His
eyes closed, and he dozed briefly.

When he woke again, David talked to him
about the work he had been doing on the farm. He pointed out the
paddock where the young calves were grazing; then, seeing the look
of frustration on his father’s face at not being able to see them
properly, David guided Charlie’s uncertain steps the short distance
to the calves.

They gave Charlie time to rest again before
Amy started packing up the remains of their picnic. On the way back
up to the house Charlie submitted to being carried with slightly
better grace than he had coming down, mustering what dignity he
could given his position.

The outing had left him so exhausted that
Amy put him straight to bed when they got back to the house, but
his eyes were almost feverishly bright from the excitement of the
day. Amy slipped into his room to see how he was whenever she had a
free moment that afternoon. Every time she came in Charlie began
talking about what he had seen, and what David had told him about
the farm.

By dinner-time he had regained enough energy
to be restless, so eager to talk about the farm that Amy had
trouble getting him to concentrate on eating his dinner. She smiled
to herself at the sight of Charlie sitting up in bed bright-eyed
and moving his good arm about excitedly. It was incongruous to see
those eyes suddenly so alive in the shrunken face. The face was
that of a frail old man, but the eyes were Malcolm’s.

David took her place that evening for his
usual stint at Charlie’s bedside. When Amy went in to settle
Charlie for the night, she saw a troubled look on David’s face.

‘Ma, he thinks… you know what he was saying
before…’ David said in a low voice as he passed her in the doorway.
He shrugged helplessly. ‘I didn’t want to spoil it for him.’

Charlie still seemed bright. ‘That’s a good
lot of calves we got this year,’ he told Amy as she took her seat
beside the bed. ‘Should be plenty of pasture for them, too.’

Amy took up her sewing and stitched away,
nodding and smiling and making an occasional vague murmur. Charlie
was simply enjoying the chance to talk about the farm. He needed an
audience, but not a particularly vocal one.

‘I’ll get them to clear that bit of scrub
over behind the big hill,’ Charlie said. ‘I never got on to that
bit.’

‘Get who, Charlie?’

‘The young fellows. They can start it when
the boy gets home.’

Amy bent low over her stitching to hide her
expression. ‘Charlie, Mal isn’t…’ But there was no kind way to
remind him. Better that Charlie take some pleasure from his fancy
than for her to force cruel reality back on him. ‘That’s a good
idea,’ she murmured.

He talked away, sometimes to Amy but much of
the time apparently to himself. As the room darkened, Amy lit the
lamp and continued with her sewing. When her eyes grew tired, she
put the work away in her basket and dimmed the light a little.

Charlie’s speech gradually grew more
slurred, and there were longer gaps between each word. Even when he
had lapsed into silence, Amy sat on beside him, wanting to be sure
he was asleep before she left.

She put out the lamp and waited in the
darkness, listening to the sound of his breathing. She waited so
long that she dozed briefly, then woke and waited a little longer.
At last she dared creep from the room, but before she had reached
the door she heard him stir.

At first Amy thought she must have disturbed
him, despite her careful silence. But Charlie had not woken. He was
dreaming; tossing about restlessly, and mumbling words she could
not make out.

No, it was more than a dream, Amy realised
when she had crept close to the bed. The distress in his voice was
clear. Charlie was having a nightmare.

And the nightmare had words in it; words she
could make no sense of. Charlie was talking rapidly, his voice more
distressed by the moment, but it was in a language that Amy did not
understand.

The words fractured into sobs, then resolved
again into that mysterious language. And in the midst of what
seemed a string of gibberish, Amy heard a word she understood.

‘Mam-mee,’ Charlie sobbed. ‘Mam-mee.’

It could mean nothing else. The voice
wailing for his mother might have been Malcolm’s or David’s when
they were tiny, crying out for Amy to stop it hurting. She would
have crawled over broken glass to have reached that voice.

She sat on the bed and took hold of him,
forcing him to stop his restless tossing. ‘I’m here,’ she soothed.
‘I’m here.’

Charlie clung to her, fear lending him
strength. He babbled a little more, then Amy felt the rigidity
leave his body as he woke and slowly grasped the reality of his
surroundings.

She relaxed her hold a little. ‘Are you all
right? Do you want me to light the lamp?’

Charlie swallowed noisily. ‘Suit yourself,’
he said, his voice hoarse.

Amy groped around for the matches and lit a
candle. Charlie’s face looked grey in the dim light, the streaks of
tears silvery trails that disappeared into his beard. He stared at
her from red-rimmed eyes.

‘I could warm you some milk if you like,’
Amy said. ‘It might help you get back to sleep.’

He made no reply. He watched her in silence
for a few moments, then said in an unnaturally flat voice, ‘The
boy’s dead.’

‘Yes, he is,’ Amy said quietly. ‘Is that
what you were dreaming about?’

Charlie shook his head and turned away from
her gaze.

‘Do you want to talk about the bad
dream?’

He moved his head on the pillow to look at
her again. ‘Was I talking a load of nonsense?’

‘I couldn’t understand the words,’ Amy said,
grateful that she could answer him truthfully while sparing him
humiliation. ‘I think it was another language.’

Charlie looked startled, then pensive. ‘I
thought I’d lost the Gaelic. Must still be in there somewhere.’

Locked away with memories of his mother. Amy
could guess what he had been dreaming, and why he had woken from
the nightmare with the knowledge of Malcolm’s death suddenly clear.
Losing his mother and losing Malcolm had intertwined, the two
griefs melding into one pain.

She lit the lamp and put out the candle.
‘See if you can get back to sleep. I’ll stay here till you feel
better.’

But Charlie showed no sign of falling
asleep. He shook his head when she again offered warm milk, and
made no answer when she asked if he wanted anything else. He lay
against the pillows staring up at the dim ceiling.

‘I’m cold,’ he complained after a long
silence.

That was something she could help him with,
though the night seemed warm to Amy. She hurried to fetch a blanket
from her bed and spread it carefully over him.

‘Is that better?’

‘What did you go rushing off like that for?’
he asked, fixing her with a resentful stare.

‘Just to get you a blanket. I wasn’t gone
long.’

She saw him shiver, and she tucked the
blanket in more snugly. ‘I get awful lonely at night,’ he said in a
low voice. ‘I wake up in the night and there’s no one there.’

‘I’m here, Charlie. I’m here.’

‘But you go off. I wake up and you’ve gone
off.’

Amy stroked his forehead. ‘I’ll stay here
all night, then.’ She turned the lamp down low and tried to make
herself a little comfortable on the hard chair.

‘Amy?’ The word sounded clearly in the
silent room, though his voice was faint. It struck Amy that Charlie
had taken to using her name even when there was no one else to hear
them, instead of the abusive words he had been accustomed to fling
at her. ‘I’m still cold.’

She frowned in concern, sure that two
blankets should be more than enough on so mild a night. ‘Do you
want another blanket? I could get my bedspread.’

‘No. Don’t want blankets.’ He looked at her
with a sort of longing in his face, and Amy realised what he was
too frightened to ask.

‘Do you want me to get in bed with you?’ The
words were out before she could call them back.

Charlie nodded without looking at her, then
sneaked a glance. ‘I wouldn’t give you any bother. Don’t think I
could even if I wanted to,’ he added miserably.

Amy studied him, memories etching their way
through old channels of almost-forgotten pain. She had long ago
made the decision never to share his bed again, though it had meant
defying Charlie in all his frightening strength.

But that strength was long gone. Charlie was
the frail creature lying in his bed, old and sick and crying for
his mother. To hold fast to her decision would be cruelly
selfish.

‘All right. I’ll go and get my nightie,
then.’

‘No!’ he said in distress. ‘Don’t go
away!’

He was frightened she would not come back,
Amy knew. ‘But Charlie, I’ve got to…’

She admitted defeat when his face crumpled
in threatened tears. ‘I suppose I don’t have to, really.’

She took off her dress and camisole, unlaced
her corset, then sat down to take off her stockings, aware of
Charlie’s eyes on her all through the exercise. She stood up again
to undo her outer petticoat, then folded the garments and placed
them on the chair, pleased at the knowledge that her chemise and
under petticoat covered her as decently as a nightdress would
have.