‘No, I see that. I’m sorry, Sarah. It was just that… it was all so sudden, last night. I thought he was going to make a fuss in front of everyone—people were starting to stare. I thought if I could just see him for a few minutes he’d leave me alone. I hope he will now.’
‘I’m afraid you probably encouraged him. You really will have to be more careful, Amy. I hate to think of your exposing yourself to the conduct of such a man. Frankly, there’s very little I’d put past him. I could tell you stories about Mr Taylor that would curl your hair even more than it is.’
‘Please don’t talk about him any more,’ Amy said, dimly aware of a renewed feeling of nausea.
Sarah continued to look uneasy. ‘No, I think I had better tell you a few things about him—you need to be on your guard. I’m not in the habit of listening to idle gossip, but one can’t move in Auckland’s business circles without hearing rumours—nor in its social circles without hearing worse ones.’
She paused, and for a moment Amy dared hope that she would let the subject rest with her vague warnings. But Sarah was only mustering her thoughts.
‘His business is not at all sound. His father was a competent businessman by all accounts, and as far as I know he had a fair reputation. But the current Mr Taylor has a name for cutting corners, and for sharp practice when he can get away with it. It’s well known that small tradesmen—the sort of hardworking men Father always insisted must be paid before anyone else—struggle to get their money out of Taylor. Many of them refuse to have anything to do with him now. And he’s reaping the results of his behaviour. It’s common knowledge that his wife’s money subsidises the business—it would be running down even faster than it is without that prop. His personal expenses, too—he struts about as if he thinks himself quite the gentleman, but I’ve heard it said more than once that those fine suits of his are bought out of the allowance his wife pays him.’
‘That’s not really any of my business, Sarah.’
‘Perhaps not, but I want you to know as much as possible about the man. I think he’s capable of creating a better impression of himself than is justified on closer acquaintance.’ Again, Sarah paused; and again, Amy hoped that the subject might be allowed to drop. Hoped in vain.
‘I’m only telling you these things so you’ll understand how flimsy his façade as a successful man of business is. His business dealings would be enough on their own to mark him as a man to have as little to do with as possible. But as for his personal life—’
‘Sarah, no,’ Amy pleaded. ‘Please don’t say any more.’
‘I’d be quite ready to respect the man’s privacy if he hadn’t bullied you into meeting him like that. I want you to be properly armed. Let me finish, Amy, then we won’t need to speak of him again. Believe me, I take no pleasure in it. You must prepare yourself to hear some rather distasteful things.’
Sarah took a sip of tea before going on. ‘I spend much of my time with men, at the meetings that drag me away from you. There’s a certain advantage to that—men sometimes forget for a short time that there’s a woman in their presence, and they talk as freely as they might among themselves. I’ve picked up many an interesting piece of information in that way, along with a good deal of gossip. Never let anyone tell you that it’s only women who gossip.
‘Some of the sillier fellows I’ve encountered seem to have a sneaking admiration for the likes of Mr Taylor, but I’ve found that more steady men have little time for him. Especially the ones with daughters to worry about—or perhaps wives that they suspect are not entirely trustworthy. One of the great injustices of our society, Amy, is that a woman’s reputation is far more fragile than a man’s.’
‘I know,’ Amy whispered.
‘And men like Mr Taylor seem to have no compunction about damaging that reputation. I gather that there have been… incidents. There was one in particular last year that apparently came close to landing a foolish woman in the divorce courts. Fortunately for all parties, Mr Taylor had been just cautious enough, and nothing could be proved. He’s also known to frequent a certain type of establishment—’
‘Stop it, Sarah,’ Amy interrupted. ‘You mustn’t talk like this. It’s not right.’
‘I’m not going to pretend ignorance, Amy. I would have thought I could talk to you without any such pretence. Why in the world shouldn’t I tell you what I know about him? Well?’
Amy’s head was pounding harder than ever. It was difficult for her to think straight, but Sarah seemed to want an answer. ‘You shouldn’t talk about him like that. It’s not right. It’s not respectful.’ The moment the word was out, she knew that she could hardly have chosen a worse one.
‘Respectful?’ Sarah said in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me I should show respect to that man? Why? Because he’s older than I am? Heaven forbid you think I should because he’s a man and I’m only a woman. I believe respect is something to be earned, and I’m not aware of anything that man has done to earn mine. He’s at best a buffoon, and at worst a scoundrel. Can you give me one good reason I should show him respect? No? In that case I’ll tell you—’
‘He’s your father,’ Amy cried, the word tearing from her like a scream. Silence flooded the room, so heavy that she could barely breathe through it. ‘He’s your father,’ she whispered.
11
Sarah was staring wide-eyed at her. ‘My father?’ Her mouth twisted in disgust, as if the very word left a foul taste. ‘Him? Good God, Amy, was that the best you could do? I credited you with more intelligence—more refinement—more basic decency than that. How could you have—’
She turned aside, biting off whatever she had been going to add, but she had said enough. No one else would have had the power to wound Amy so bitterly.
‘I’d better go home,’ Amy said quietly. Sarah said nothing. ‘I’ll go and see about a passage tomorrow. I’ll leave as soon as I can.’
‘Yes, perhaps you’d better,’ Sarah said, almost spitting the words. She glanced at Amy for a moment, then turned away again.
Amy got up and left the room. She did not say goodnight; still less did she attempt to kiss Sarah.
The flight of stairs had never seemed so steep. Mounting each step meant a deliberate effort to push one foot up to the next level, then drag the other after it. When she had at last reached the top, she walked slowly to her room and closed the door behind her.
She undressed, put on her nightgown and hung the dress in her wardrobe, her limbs leaden. She stood in front of the wardrobe for some time, looking at the beautiful gowns Sarah had bought for her. She would leave them there, Amy decided. There was no point in taking them to Ruatane, where she would have no occasion for such finery. She would return to wearing the mourning she had only set aside for Sarah’s sake. If Sarah did not give them away, the dresses would stay here, shut up in the wardrobe and slowly fading. Just like Amy’s memories of these precious months she had spent with Sarah.
She was lucky, she told herself. She had never allowed herself to hope that she would ever have so much as a glimpse of her daughter again; beyond hope, she had spent this time living in Sarah’s house and seeing her every day. She had a treasure of memories to hoard. She must content herself with them, knowing that after she caught the boat home to Ruatane she would never see Sarah again.
It was too much to expect that Sarah might have understood something of how it had been. How could she? Sarah’s life had been spent surrounded by people whose chief care was her comfort and security. A man like Jimmy would never have been allowed to come near her. Even if he had, Sarah would not have been beguiled by soft words and the assurance that she was special. The people who loved her had been telling her such things all her life.
Amy halted her train of thought, aware that she was coming close to blaming Sarah for having reacted with such disgust. The innocence that had produced Sarah’s response was something to be thankful for, not resent. And in the whole untidy muddle, Sarah was the one person who was blameless.
She sat down in front of the dressing table and picked up her hairbrush, then put it back. Even running a brush through her hair demanded more energy than she could muster at the moment. Her head throbbed, and she felt bone-achingly weary.
In the morning she would have to brave the commotion of the Auckland wharves. She had no idea where in that confusion of ships and cargoes and sailors and wharf labourers she might find the ticket booking office, but she would have to look for a helpful face among the strangers and ask her way. She hoped there would be a boat leaving soon; her last days with Sarah seemed destined to be an awkward period of trying to keep out of each other’s sight. Best to get it over with. She wondered if Sarah would bother saying goodbye to her.
There was a soft knock on the door, and it opened a crack.
‘Amy?’ came Sarah’s voice. ‘May I come in?’
Without waiting for a response, Sarah entered the room and walked slowly over to the dressing table. She picked up Amy’s discarded hairbrush and turned it to and fro, then walked around the room, still clutching the hairbrush.
‘You know,’ she said, apparently addressing the far wall, ‘Mother very rarely punished me. I suppose that explains a lot. But once or twice when I was small, I managed to exhaust even her patience. Then she used the hairbrush on me.’ She crossed to Amy, knelt down and placed the hairbrush in her lap. ‘Feel free,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ve never deserved it more.’
Amy raised her eyes to look into Sarah’s, and saw tears brimming there. ‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah whispered. ‘Can you forgive me?’
Amy held out her arms and Sarah sank into them, resting her head in Amy’s lap. ‘You only said what was true. There’s nothing to forgive.’
Sarah raised her head. ‘Oh yes, there is. I had no right to speak to you like that. When I think of the abuse you’ve had to put up with over the years on my account, and now you hear the same sort of language from me! I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself. Please, Amy. Please say you forgive me. I need to hear the words.’
‘If there was anything to forgive, it’s forgiven. I know you must have got a shock, hearing it like that.’
Sarah got up from the floor and pulled a stool over close to Amy’s chair so that she could sit beside her. ‘It’s ridiculous of me—logically I knew it couldn’t have been a man of honour. If my father had been a hero tragically killed saving a hundred people from a shipwreck the week before you were to be married, you’d have told me the moment you found out who I was. Since you were silent on the subject, I knew he must be no one to be proud of.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘But I find there’s a large difference between a conveniently faceless rogue and one who’s all too substantial.’
She stroked Amy’s cheek. ‘Does your head still hurt?’
‘A bit,’ Amy admitted. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Nothing mattered, now that she knew Sarah still loved her.
Sarah fetched a pillow and slipped it down the back of Amy’s chair. ‘Lean back. I used to do this for Mother when she had headaches.’ She took a bottle of lavender water from the dressing table, dabbed some on her fingers and gently massaged Amy’s temples. ‘Is this all right?’
‘Mmm. It’s lovely.’ Amy closed her eyes and gave herself over to the comfort of Sarah’s closeness. The scent of lavender and the soft touch of Sarah’s hands drove a wave of contentment through her. The pain in her head became no more than a dull ache, powerless to spoil the moment.
‘Amy?’ Sarah said quietly. ‘Do you feel able to tell me a little of how I came to be? I’ll understand if you don’t want to, but I must confess that I’m curious now. I’m sure he must have been very different back then, to win you over the way he did.’
Amy considered her answer carefully. Sarah had the right to know, however uncomfortable Amy might find recalling those days. ‘No, I don’t think he was so very different. Not in the ways that really matter. He was much younger, of course. I thought he was very handsome. And he was less… oh, I don’t know the right word for it. Less hard, somehow.’
‘Cynical?’ Sarah suggested.
‘Yes, perhaps that’s it. He was a lot more cheerful then, too—everyone liked him. Well, everyone except Lizzie. She never did trust him.’
‘How wise Mrs Kelly is,’ Sarah murmured. She wiped her fingers on a handkerchief to remove the traces of lavender water, took up the hairbrush and began brushing Amy’s hair. ‘But whatever was he doing in Ruatane?’
‘It was because of Susannah. He asked if he could come and visit her.’
‘Mrs Leith? Of course, he’s her brother. Good Lord, she’s my aunt!’ The brush stopped moving.
Amy studied Sarah’s face. It was twisted oddly, as if she were fighting back tears. Sarah let out a strangled little sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, then laughter won out. ‘Oh, Amy!’ she said when she had caught her breath, ‘if these new relations you’ve given me don’t cure me of vanity, nothing will!’
Amy smiled at the sight of Sarah’s mirth. She waited patiently till Sarah calmed herself, content to watch that merry face.
‘So he decided to try farm life?’ Sarah asked at last.
‘I think there might have been some trouble up here. He got his mother to write and ask if he could come, and Pa said he could. He was… I don’t know if I can explain properly. You know how I wanted to be a teacher? I had such grand ideas—I’d get a job in Auckland, and I’d be able to study things. I thought I’d buy lots of books, and go and see plays. I wanted that as far back as I can remember.
‘I had to stop working at the school because I couldn’t get all my work done at home. Then when Susannah came, Miss Evans—she was my old teacher—thought maybe I could start again. But Susannah said I wasn’t allowed.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Sarah murmured.
‘Well, Pa was never very keen on the idea, anyway. That summer I was fifteen. Susannah was miserable, and she made Pa miserable, too. Her and I would fight, and that’d make Pa even more unhappy. All there seemed to be was cooking and cleaning and helping look after the babies, and everyone seemed to think all I should want was to get married and carry on doing that in a house of my own.’
‘And then he arrived.’
‘Yes. He was nice to me, Sarah. I don’t mean everyone else was horrible, but… he made me feel as if I was special. He’d talk to me about books and plays and things. He’d tell me I was pretty, and clever. He bought me nice things.’ She hesitated before adding, ‘He gave me that brooch.’
‘This?’ Sarah touched the gold brooch she wore. A brief look of distaste passed over her face, rapidly replaced by a determined expression. ‘Well, I’ve always thought of it as coming from you, and I’ve valued it for that reason. I’ll continue to do so.’
‘It was my Christmas present. I had to keep it secret from everyone else, though. Everything had to be secret.’ It was becoming more difficult to go on, knowing what she would soon have to speak of, but Amy made herself continue.
‘He told me he loved me. I thought he meant it. And he asked me to marry him—I thought we were engaged, Sarah. When… when it happened. I thought we were going to get married. He told me he’d bring me to Auckland as soon as we were married, and he talked about how he’d buy me fancy clothes, and take me to the park, and to the theatre.’ She smiled at Sarah. ‘All the things you’ve done for me instead. But he said it had to be a secret engagement, just for a while. I was stupid enough to believe him.’
‘You were fifteen,’ Sarah said quietly. ‘You had a trusting nature, and you fell into the hands of a rogue.’
‘I still should have known better. I knew it was wrong, but… well, I kept thinking it would be all right as soon as we got married. He said he’d ask Pa, then he said he’d better write and ask his father first. And somehow it all took so long.’
She fell silent, thinking back to that time, then sighed and went on. ‘And then I realised there was going to be a baby. If I’d had any sense I would have known things weren’t righ
t from the way he acted then. He’d managed to put off asking Pa or writing to his father for months, but after I told him you were on the way, he was on the boat and out of Ruatane in under a week.’ And having indulged himself with a passionate farewell from Amy. That was one detail she would never share with Sarah. ‘He told me he’d ask his father and come back soon, and I should keep it secret till then. So I did. I waited and waited. Then after he’d been gone a few weeks, Susannah had a letter from her mother saying he’d gone to Australia. That’s when I knew he wasn’t coming back. That’s when I knew he’d been lying to me.’
Sarah’s voice shook a little when she spoke. ‘Such men should be flogged through the streets, then put in stocks in front of the courthouse. Instead, we allow them to be respected members of society.’ She was silent for a few moments, then continued more calmly. ‘Thank you for telling me that, Amy. But why did that man want to see you again today? I don’t suppose it was to beg forgiveness.’
Amy smiled faintly. ‘No. Mostly he wanted to ask me what had happened to the baby—I didn’t tell him about you, Sarah. I didn’t even say if it was a girl or a boy. I just told him I gave the baby away, and I knew it had gone to good people.’
‘And why the sudden interest on his part after all these years?’
‘I suppose it was because of seeing me again. But he’s got some idea in his head about wanting an heir.’
‘An heir? To that business? Ha!’ Sarah said in derision. ‘I’m glad you gave him no satisfaction.’ She was too observant to have missed a single detail. ‘You said it was “mostly” to ask about me. What else did he want?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter, Amy. Whatever he said had you in quite a state this evening. What was it?’
A Second Chance Page 18
