Settling the Account by Shayne Parkinson

Author:Shayne Parkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: family, historical, victorian, new zealand, farming, edwardian, farm life
Publisher: Shayne Parkinson

17

July – November 1902

But even if it no longer had any meaning, life was not something she could slip out of like a worn, old dress. Amy came to herself in the early morning cold and stiff, her throat raw with weeping, and her body aching after a night spent on the bare floor. She was alive, and the world had to be faced.

She undressed in the dark, and clambered into bed in her underwear, too weary for the bother of lighting a candle or putting on her nightdress. She did not know how long she had spent in the bed when she heard Charlie come home; nor how long it was after that before the habit learned over years woke her. It was time to get up, pull on some clothes, and make breakfast.

Amy ate her share as soon as she had cooked it, swallowing the food mechanically, hardly knowing what it was. She had cooked far too much, she realised as she dished it up, now that she had no growing boys to fill. The thought sent a fresh pang of loss through her, so acute that she felt it as a pain in her belly. It was not going to be easy to keep up the composed façade she intended to show Charlie. But she was determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing her grief in its raw nakedness. Night and the privacy of her own room were the time and place for such self-indulgence.

She dished up an extravagant helping for Charlie and left it on the side of the range to keep warm, quite sure that he would sleep in a little after his outing of the night before. Her empty plate was on the bench with her knife and fork placed neatly on it by the time Charlie came out to the kitchen.

Amy felt his eyes fixed on her as she placed the plate in front of him. She busied herself with tidying the kitchen, filling the silence with the rattling of pots and plates. It took her some time to clear the mess Charlie had left after his abortive attempt to make his own dinner the night before, but she was glad of the distraction as she picked up the last shards of broken china from the corner where they lay half-hidden, wiped the spilt sugar from the bench, and swept up the heap of barley that had fallen to the floor when Charlie knocked over the bag. He seemed oblivious to the state he had left the kitchen in. If I wasn’t here, he’d have the kitchen worse than that. There’d be mud everywhere, too, if I wasn’t cleaning it up all the time. After a couple of weeks, you’d think there’d never been a woman in this house.

Charlie ate his food in silence, but he caught her eye when she reached across to take his empty plate. ‘Don’t think you can get away with that nonsense of yours again. Locking yourself in, and no dinner on the table and all.

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