Mud and Gold

by Shayne Parkinson

  Something about the way Smokey tossed his head did not seem quite right. Amy put down her bucket and walked over to the paddock. She looked down and saw that the horse had entangled his front fetlock in a coil of rusting wire lying near the fence. ‘Oh, poor Smokey, no wonder you’re frightened.’ She reached through the lower two rails and tried to grasp the twisted wire, but it was just beyond her reach.

  Smokey tossed his head and snorted nervously. He stamped his foot, rattling the wire. ‘Stop that, Smokey—you’ll make it worse. Oh, I’ll have to climb over and untangle you.’

  Amy started to clamber over the fence, holding on to a post and careful to avoid the section of the top rail where the wood had split into two jagged spikes. Just as she reached out towards Smokey’s halter, a gust of wind caught her skirts and set them flapping. Smokey whinnied in alarm and tried to rear, then let out a horsey scream of pain as the end of the wire bit into his leg.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ came a shout behind Amy. ‘Get away from my horse!’

  Amy turned to see Charlie running towards her. ‘He’s caught in some wire—I was trying to get him out of it.’

  ‘Trying to cripple him, more like. Get down off there.’ He yanked at Amy, pulling her off the fence. She heard her skirt rip as the split in the wood caught it. Charlie pushed her away from him. She lost her balance and fell to the ground.

  Charlie made soothing noises to the horse, caught him by the halter, and tethered it to the fence with some twine from his pocket. He soon had the wire safely away from Smokey’s leg. He threw it over the fence, climbed back to Amy’s side, and untied the halter. Smokey moved off with only a slight limp.

  Amy picked herself up and raised her eyes to meet Charlie’s. She winced at the anger she saw there. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I was only trying to help Smokey.’

  She cried out as Charlie smacked the back of his hand against her cheek. ‘You had no business interfering with my horse! You keep away from my animals, you stupid bitch! The kitchen’s your place. You could have lamed him!’ He caught her another blow, this time across the side of her head, making Amy’s ears ring, then took hold of her bodice and shook her. ‘I’ll teach you your place!’ He slapped her hard on both cheeks, still gripping her bodice with one hand, while Amy sobbed with pain. When he let go she sank to her knees and cradled her face between her hands.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her voice came out indistinctly. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’

  He snarled a curse at her and stalked away, bumping against Amy’s bucket of water and knocking it flying as he went.

  Amy crouched on the ground until the roaring in her ears stopped, then fumbled for her now-empty bucket. I’ve done the wrong thing again. I’m going to have another bruise now. I hope it’s gone before Lizzie’s wedding.

  4

  April 1885

  On the day before his wedding Frank managed to persuade his brother to take the milk to the factory, giving Frank a valuable hour or two alone. It was best that Ben did not see what Frank was about to do.

  When Ben returned he wandered into the kitchen, then stood and looked aghast at the scene. All the dishes had been washed and stacked, the table and bench wiped down, and Frank was attacking the stubborn dried mud on the floor with a stiff broom.

  ‘I thought you said that woman of yours was going to do the work,’ Ben said indignantly.

  ‘She is—of course she is,’ Frank assured him. ‘She’ll keep the place really nice. But it’s not fair to expect her to clean up all this mess, is it?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well… it’s just not. It’s really old dirt, Ben. I can’t remember the last time we cleaned this kitchen.’

  ‘It was clean enough before.’ Ben shook his head in disgust. ‘You make me sick, you know that? Mooning around over the first lot of skirts you ever noticed.’

  ‘All right, shut up about it. You’ll like Lizzie once you get to know her.’

  ‘I never thought you were that stupid. You’re going to regret it one day, you know. You just remember, I warned you not to bring a woman into the house.’

  ‘I won’t need to remember. You’ll keep telling me.’

  ‘No I won’t,’ Ben said. ‘You’ll never hear anything about it from me after tomorrow.’

  Frank found that hard to believe, but let it pass. ‘Hey, Ben,’ he said cautiously, ‘I sort of wondered…’ He stopped himself. Why on earth was he nervous about making a perfectly reasonable request of his own brother, when a few days before he had managed to ask his future father-in-law for the most intimate advice possible?

  ‘I want me and Lizzie to have Ma and Pa’s old room,’ he began again boldly. ‘I think Lizzie should have the best bedroom. Do you mind?’

  ‘I don’t care a damn,’ Ben said. ‘Just as long as you keep her out of my room—even that doesn’t matter, come to think of it. Not after tomorrow.’

  Ben was beginning to sound mysterious. Perhaps he was just trying to be annoying. ‘Lizzie won’t go in your room, Ben—not unless you want her to make your bed or something. But you’re still the oldest. If you get married, you can have the good bedroom and Lizzie and me will move out of it.’

  ‘Huh! I’ll never be that bloody stupid—no woman’s ever going to get her claws into me.’

  ‘Please yourself, Ben.’

  Frank suspected that the parlour would start being used a lot more once Lizzie arrived. He opened its windows and waved a cloth around the furniture, raising clouds of dust. That looked good enough, he decided, as he made his way out of the room in a fit of coughing. He couldn’t possibly get all the dust off the mantelpiece and tables; much of it seemed to have set in place.

  He opened the window in the front bedroom and gave its furniture the same cursory attention the parlour’s had received, but when he shook the mattresses they made so much dust that his work was undone at once. He dragged the mattresses out to the verandah, where they could have a good airing. After all, the bed had not been slept in for years.

  That afternoon Frank hunted out clean sheets and made up the bed. With its pretty blue coverlet, the brass bedstead looked inviting. Frank could picture his mother propped up against the pillows, smiling at him. She had often let him sneak in to have a cuddle in the morning, while Frank was still too young to go off with his father and Ben. In the last few years of her life she had had to spend more and more time in that bed, and in her final months she had been too weak to get out of it at all.

  But after tomorrow it wouldn’t be his mother smiling up at him from the pillows. It would be Lizzie. At least he hoped she would be smiling; that would depend on how good a job he made of things.

  Frank sighed. He would do his best, and that was all he could do. He ran through his scraps of information and made his plans. Tomorrow morning he would leave a clean nightshirt under the pillow; no, he would leave it in his own bedroom. Lizzie might be shy the first night; Frank was quite sure he would be. He would let her get undressed in private.

  He hoped Ben would stay out late the night of the wedding; either that or go to bed very early. Despite Arthur’s comments about not wasting time, Frank had decided it would be a good idea for him and Lizzie to share a cup of tea before they went to bed, and he was sure Ben’s presence at the table would do nothing to help them relax.

  After a nice, quiet supper together, he would suggest that Lizzie get ready for bed while he got undressed in his old room. When she was ready, he would join her in the bedroom; in the bed, in fact. Then what? Put out the lamp, of course; neither of them was going to want to be seen. Cuddling in the dark would be fun, and he knew Lizzie would let him fondle anything he liked once they were safely married.

  His step-by-step plan gave Frank a small amount of confidence. Now all he had to do was pray that by the time his knowledge ran out, at the cuddling stage, ‘Doing what comes naturally’ would have taken over. He smiled at the thought of Lizzie’s body snuggling up against his. Even if he couldn’t
figure it all out at first, they were going to have some good cuddles.

  *

  The day of Lizzie and Frank’s wedding dawned beautifully clear and sunny. After breakfast Amy timidly asked permission to go to her uncle’s house in time to help Lizzie get ready. To her relief, Charlie gave his consent with nothing more than an admonition to ‘Behave yourself’. She put the slight feeling of nausea with which she had woken down to fear that Charlie might have refused her request.

  Amy walked up the road wearing a faded print frock and carrying her good dress and beautiful hat; she had decided the occasion was special enough to take the hat from its shelf. She felt like a child let out of school on the first day of the holidays as she revelled in the luxury of being alone. Apart from the ill-fated visit to Susannah just after her marriage, and a hurried second visit to return her borrowings, it was the first time she had left Charlie’s farm by herself in the two months since her wedding.

  Once she had rounded a bend in the road and Charlie’s property was out of sight, Amy managed to shake off an uneasy sense of being watched. She looked around her at the beauty of the bush. It was as if she had not seen it for years, and she almost felt like giving a little skip as she went along. The long walk to Arthur’s farm did not seem weary; it was like a pleasant Sunday stroll. Even the mild churning in her stomach failed to lower her spirits.

  When she got to the farm, Bill and Alf were busy setting out all the chairs the Leiths owned or had been able to borrow on the lawn in front of the verandah. Amy waved to them as she went into the house and sought out Lizzie.

  Lizzie and her mother had been up from first light, putting the finishing touches to the wedding breakfast then preparing Lizzie for display. Amy let out a gasp when she saw her. All the romantic notions she and Lizzie had talked about as children, of brides glowing with joy on their wedding days, were made real in Lizzie. The round, cheerful face had taken on a radiance that lifted it beyond ordinary prettiness and into something Amy supposed must be beauty. She had never seen anyone looking so happy.

  Lizzie was standing in the parlour beside a table groaning under its load. The centrepiece was a three-tier wedding cake surrounded by vases of flowers, and Lizzie looked like the cake come to life. Her gown was of pale pink satin stitched into a mass of gathers and ruffles. The bodice had tiny pin-tucks either side of a row of ivory buttons, and was edged with cream lace. The same lace made a frill around the neck and cuffs, and the sleeves were smocked above the elbows. She had a puffed train over her bustle and spilling around her feet, on which she wore white satin shoes.

  ‘Amy, you’ve got nimble fingers, help me with this blessed thing,’ Edie asked, struggling with Lizzie’s veil. Amy helped her secure it to Lizzie’s hair with pins before they placed a wreath of orange blossom over the tulle.

  ‘Doesn’t she look fine?’ Edie said, beaming all over her broad, good-natured face as she and Amy stood back to admire their handiwork.

  ‘Lovely. Just lovely,’ Amy agreed.

  Edie clucked in alarm when the mantel clock struck nine. The two girls sent her off to finish her own toilette. Amy turned back to Lizzie, and stood drinking in the sight.

  ‘You look beautiful.’ She gave Lizzie a careful hug, anxious not to disturb any of her finery. ‘Frank is a very lucky man.’

  ‘I’ll make sure he knows it, don’t you worry.’ Lizzie studied her, and Amy instinctively shied away from the inspection. ‘I haven’t seen you much lately. I’ve really missed you since you got married. But, you know, there’s been all this stuff to do, getting ready for the wedding… are you well, Amy?’

  Amy felt her face take on a closed expression, and she replied more sharply than she had intended.

  ‘Quite well enough, thank you. There’s no need to worry about me.’

  ‘You look so tired—you’ve got shadows under your eyes, and I think you’ve lost a bit of weight. Your face looks sort of drawn. Haven’t you been sleeping well?’

  ‘A husband takes a bit of getting used to, you’ll find.’ Amy attempted a laugh, but failed. ‘There’s a lot to get used to with a new house, too.’ Washing clothes by the creek. Hauling wet washing up the hill. Dragging water all the way from the well.

  ‘Is he treating you all right?’

  Amy gave a tired sigh. ‘He’s my husband. He can do whatever he likes. I try to please him, and sometimes I get it right. I’ll get better at it.’

  ‘How did you get this?’ Lizzie asked, fingering the fading purple bruise on Amy’s cheek.

  ‘That’s from not getting it right,’ Amy snapped, pushing Lizzie’s hand away. ‘What do you want, Lizzie—do you want me to burst out crying and tell you that you were right, I shouldn’t have done it? I’ve made my bed, and I’m the one who has to lie in it.’ I have to lie in that bed every night and wonder if he’ll hurt me, or if he’ll just start snoring. ‘You’re the one who was always so keen on getting married, anyway. Don’t you like what you see of the real thing? Should I tell you to back out of it while you still can?’

  She regretted her last words at once, but Lizzie ignored them. She put an arm around Amy and held her close. Dry sobs racked Amy, but she would not allow herself the relief of tears. Not tears on a wedding morning; her grandmother had always said that was terribly bad luck.

  ‘You’re right,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m being an interfering busybody and I should learn to keep my mouth shut. But I do love you, and I hate to see you unhappy. I hate to think of him hurting you. If I wasn’t practising keeping my mouth shut…’

  Amy recovered herself and gave Lizzie a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘I wouldn’t have you any other way,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘But you mustn’t worry about me on your special day. I brought it all on myself, you know, it’s no good complaining now. I’ll be all right, really I will. I’m just a bit tired, and I’m still not very good at pleasing Charlie. Now, let’s finish getting you ready! Where’s your bouquet?’

  ‘In my bedroom. You’d better get changed, too, come on.’

  Amy put on her pretty dress and Lizzie helped pin on her hat. Amy had to clench her teeth to avoid crying out when Lizzie’s hand knocked against the side of her head where Charlie had hit her, but Lizzie didn’t seem to notice.

  Amy carried Lizzie’s huge bouquet out to the parlour for her. They fussed about with the flowers, Amy twitched at the veil and train, and by the time Lizzie’s mother came bustling back out of her bedroom Lizzie was ready.

  ‘Now what do I do, Ma?’ Lizzie asked. ‘I’ve got ready too early! I can’t even sit down, can I?’

  ‘No, you’ll crease your dress,’ Edie agreed. ‘Oh, I don’t know, walk around the room or something. Don’t walk too much, though, you’ll disturb your veil.’

  ‘Ma!’ Lizzie complained. She took small, mincing steps around the room while Amy helped her aunt carry even more food out from the kitchen.

  Amy delighted in working with her aunt. It was easy to pretend she was a little girl again and staying with Lizzie; easy to smile back when Edie beamed at her. Even the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach was forgotten as she scurried about. When the tables in the parlour were hopelessly full, Amy and Edie left the remaining food in the kitchen and collapsed onto a couch. Lizzie stood in front of the mantelpiece and tried to glare balefully at them, but her glow of happiness defeated any attempt at looking resentful.

  Amy heard her uncle come in. When he had changed into his best suit he joined them in the parlour.

  ‘You look good, girl,’ he said, gazing proudly at Lizzie. ‘You look really good. So you should—that dress cost a fortune! That dressmaker saw you and your ma coming.’

  He turned to Amy, and she felt shy. Her uncle had always been like a second father to her, but she knew he had disapproved of her ever since her disgrace. Today all that seemed to be forgotten, and he smiled affectionately at her. ‘At least you didn’t bankrupt your pa with your wedding, eh, Amy? I’ve just about had to mortgage the place to pay for all this.’ He patted
Amy on the shoulder. ‘And you beat her to it! For all her chasing after Frank, you got a husband first.’ Amy knew he meant it kindly. She managed to smile back at him.

  Arthur sat on the couch beside Edie and gave his wife a squeeze. ‘Brings back a few memories, eh, Edie?’ Edie giggled like a girl. ‘Now we’ve got to sit around and wait for everyone to arrive. Don’t worry, Lizzie, if Frank doesn’t turn up I’ll go looking for him. I’d better make sure I get rid of you after spending all this money!’

  ‘Frank’ll turn up,’ Lizzie said, smiling confidently.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Arthur said with a wicked grin. ‘He might take fright and make a bolt for it!’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ Lizzie said in a voice full of certainty.

  *

  Frank got up at his usual early hour that morning. At the milking shed his mind was full of Lizzie, and Ben was as taciturn as usual, so they worked in silence. They had just turned the last cow out into the yard when Ben announced, ‘I’m not coming to your wedding, boy.’

  ‘Eh? But you’re to be best man!’ Frank said in dismay.

  Ben gave a snort of derision. ‘It’s all a lot of rot. I don’t want anything to do with it. You can put the ball and chain around your ankle without me helping. I’m going away for a bit—it’ll give that girl a chance to settle in and start ordering you about.’ And with that he walked back to the house.

  Frank hurried after him and asked just where he was going, but Ben refused to answer. Frank persisted until it was time for him to start getting ready, then shook his head and went off to his bedroom where his suit was laid out on the bed.

  By the time he had shaved, given himself a stand-up wash and put on clean underwear the shock of Ben’s announcement had worn off, and Frank was quietly grateful for his brother’s strange decision; bringing Lizzie home for the first time was going to be far easier without Ben scowling at her, or perhaps even giving her his opinions on how women should behave, as soon as she walked in the door.