Sentence of Marriage

449 Pages·2012·1.467 MB·English

by  Shayne Parkinson

Promises to Keep
Book One
Sentence of Marriage
Shayne Parkinson
Copyright © S. L. Parkinson 2006
Smashwords Edition
Other titles by Shayne Parkinson at Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/shaynep
Family trees and some extra background to the book’s setting
can be found at:
http://www.shayneparkinson.com/
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
1

July 1881
Beyond the farmhouse the ground fell gradually in a
series of low hills and flat paddocks, bright green where they
had been planted in grass and darker green where the bush
remained. The Waituhi creek wound along the valley floor
before disappearing from sight behind a steep bluff. Amy
reached the top of a hill and paused, caught as she always was
by the beauty of the view.
And beyond the mouth of the valley was the sea. The
wide sweep of the Bay of Plenty stretched to the edge of
Amy’s sight, and straight in front of her ocean met sky all
along the horizon, broken only by White Island with its
constant puff of smoke. Today she could see the island quite
clearly through the crisp winter air. The ocean looked blue
and mild. Some days it was grey and threatening; but always
to Amy it was fascinating. To her it meant the world outside
her valley; it meant excitement and adventure, and the lure of
the unknown.
As she always did, she strained her eyes to catch a
glimpse of the little steamer that served the coastal
settlements, but today there was no sign of it. Her father
would be catching it soon, travelling to Auckland to look at
the latest in farm machinery. In the whole twelve years of her
life, Amy had never been ten miles away from home.
She adjusted her grip on the handle of the basket she
carried, and turned away from the view.
The wintry sun shone out of a clear sky, with only a few
wisps of cloud near the horizon. It would have been a nice
day to find a quiet spot and read a book if she had had the
time. The ground was still soggy from recent rain, and Amy
had to watch her step in the muddy patches, but she enjoyed
the fresh air on her face, blowing away the smell of dust and
furniture polish that hung about her clothes. The occasional
blast from the bush, where her father and brothers were using
gunpowder to split logs, did not completely spoil the peace of
the day.
Amy followed the noise as she picked her way along one
of the rough tracks carved through the bush to drag out trees.
As she got closer to the men, she smelt the acrid smoke of
gunpowder.
When she got very close she could hear from their
language that they were finding the work heavy going. She
smiled to herself, and called out: ‘Is that you, Pa?’ to give
them warning of her approach.
The cursing stopped abruptly as she walked into the little
clearing. Jack, Amy’s father, managed a smile for her; her
brothers, sixteen-year-old Harry and John who was nearly
nineteen, were more interested in the contents of her basket.
‘Lunch at last—I’m starved,’ said John.
‘You took your time,’ Harry muttered.
‘Don’t talk to your sister like that,’ Jack said, flashing
him a look.
Amy ignored Harry’s remark; she could see they were all
tired out. ‘How’s everything going?’ she asked brightly.
Jack pulled a face. ‘Too slow. All this mud is bl… I mean
jolly hard to work in. And I think a bit of damp’s got into the
gunpowder—it smells a bit strange. And your brother,’ he
glared at Harry, ‘ruined that trunk.’ He gestured over his
shoulder at a splintered puriri log lying in a churned-up patch
of mud. ‘I told you to drill the hole two feet from the end—
not half way up the flaming thing. That’s no good for
anything but firewood now.’
Harry looked sullen. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to ruin it,
Pa,’ said Amy. ‘And you’ve got plenty more, haven’t you?’
‘What we haven’t got is time,’ Jack grumbled. ‘I want to
get these posts split before I leave, so the boys can get on
with fencing that bottom paddock while I’m away. And
we’ve only done half a dozen posts all morning.’
‘You’ll feel more like doing it when you’ve had lunch,’
Amy said. ‘I’ve made you some currant scones specially.’
Jack brightened at the mention of one of his favourite treats.
‘Now, where can I spread this cloth?’
They found a pretty spot nearby on the bank of the little
Waimarama stream, where sunshine dappled the water as it
rushed down to the Waituhi under overhanging tawa trees
with their yellow-green foliage. The birds had been driven
away by the men’s noise, but a few brave bellbirds came back
to provide a chorus for them. A large tree stump made a
picnic table. Amy set out a meat pie cut into slices, piles of
sandwiches, and small cakes and scones, with bottles of her
home-made lemonade to wash it all down.
Jack slapped Harry on the back as his son was taking a
bite of pie, making him choke on his mouthful. ‘Never mind,
lad, I remember ruining a few logs myself when I was your
age—when I was a bit older than that, now I come to think of
it. And it did make an almighty great crack when it split right
up the middle like that!’ He laughed, and Harry looked more
cheerful.
When they had finished eating, John and Harry set to
cutting a newly-felled puriri trunk into six-foot lengths with a
cross-cut saw. The dense, dark-brown timber was the bush
farmers’ preference for fence posts, but getting a saw blade
through it was heavy work; work for younger backs than his,
their father declared.
Amy stayed on with them, glad of the company. Since
her grandmother’s death a few months before, she had had
the house to herself when the men were out on the farm. Jack
lit his pipe and puffed away contentedly, and Amy snuggled
into the crook of his arm. She closed her eyes and took in the
familiar, comforting smell of him, made up of tobacco, the
damp wool of his jacket, and a hint of the grassy scent of
fresh cow manure.
‘Only a couple of weeks now till I’m off to Auckland,’
said Jack. ‘I should be able to have a week or so there and
still get back before calving’s really started. And I’ve got
somewhere to stay, too—Mr Craig at the store knows a chap
up there he used to be in business with years ago. He’s
written to this fellow and arranged it all. Says they’ve got a
flash house in Parnell. Better than staying in some boarding
house, anyway.’
‘I wish I could go with you,’ Amy said, the city spreading
before her eyes in imagination.
Jack patted her arm. ‘I wish you could, too. I miss my
little girl when I go away. But you’ve got to keep these
brothers of yours in line, eh? I’ll only be gone a week or two
—and I’ll bring you back something pretty. Would you like
that?’
‘Bring me a book!’
Jack laughed. ‘You and your books. Haven’t you got
enough yet? All right, something pretty and a book, how’s
that?’
Amy tilted her face for a kiss, and felt the tickle of his
beard against her cheek.
‘You’re not going to get too big for cuddles, are you?’
Jack asked.
‘Not for a long time.’ Amy glanced up at the sky; the sun
was now well to the west. ‘I’d better go in a minute—I’m
doing a steamed pudding tonight, and I need to get it started.
Oh, I need to get those rugs in off the line, too.’
Her father let go of her and crouched over his pipe,
poking at it to coax more smoke. ‘You do a fine job of it all,
girl. I know it’s a lot to manage on your own.’ His mouth
made a crooked smile around the pipe. ‘I hope I’m looking
after you properly, now your granny’s not here to do it for
me.’
His eyes told Amy he was more troubled over the matter
than his light tone suggested. ‘Of course you are, Pa.
Anyway, Granny taught me all about looking after the house.’
‘Maybe there’re things I should be telling you—things
your ma would, if she’d been spared… ah, well, no use
thinking about that.’ Jack looked off into the distance for a
few moments, then cleared his throat. ‘At least you’re not
wearing yourself out trying to manage that teaching business
any more.’
Amy made no answer, not trusting herself to speak
calmly about what had been the biggest disappointment of her
young life. After nursing her grandmother through the old
woman’s final illness, Amy had persuaded her father to allow
her to work a few days a week at the valley’s one-roomed
school. The teacher, Miss Evans, had put Amy in charge of
the youngest children, and the months she had spent guiding
the little ones through their first steps at sounding out words
and scratching letters on their slates had been the happiest of
her life.
She and Miss Evans had spoken of Amy’s intended
teaching career as a settled thing. Amy’s head had filled with
dreams of working in the city; of making her way into the
wider world. It had been a time of rushing between farm and
school, struggling to get all her work done, and cutting
corners where she could.
And it had all come crashing down at three o’clock one
morning a little over a week ago, when Jack had come out to
the kitchen to find Amy fast asleep in front of a pile of
ironing, two flatirons dangerously hot on the range.
‘I’m not going to have you working day and night trying
to do two jobs,’ her father had said. ‘You’ve got to give up
one, and you know which it is.’
Amy had seen her dreams dissolve before her eyes, but
Miss Evans had managed to comfort her, assuring Amy that
she would do her best to persuade Jack to reconsider when
Amy was a little older; perhaps next year, she had said. Amy
clung to this promise, and did her best not to let her father see
her disappointment. They needed her at home, and it was
wrong to be selfish.
Harry drilled a hole in one of the lengths of timber,
making a show of very carefully estimating two feet from the
end, and took the bottle of gunpowder to put some in the
hole. ‘This look all right, Pa?’ he asked. Jack hauled himself
to his feet and went to check Harry’s work.
Amy stowed the plates and cloth in her basket. She
managed to get a fair distance away before the noise of
splitting logs began again.
*
In the winter months Amy was the first person in the
house to get up. She rose next morning as soon as a hint of
daylight crept into her room. By the time she had dressed,
made her bed and brushed her hair, the hills she could
glimpse through her window stood out against the pink sky of
dawn.
She laid her hairbrush on the dressing table, in front of
her little bookshelf. To one side of the shelf stood a
photograph in a silver-plated frame. The picture showed a
dark-haired woman, Amy’s mother, holding a tiny baby that
Amy had been assured was herself at the age of six weeks.
The woman was sitting on the verandah of Amy’s house,
smiling at the photographer as she held her baby daughter
close. Four-year-old Harry stood beside his mother, clutching
her skirt and looking dubious, while a young-looking Jack
stood on her other side holding six-year-old John by the hand.
Jack had an identical photograph on the dressing table in his
room.
Amy picked up the photograph and studied it. She had
only dim memories of her mother, who had died when Amy
was three years old, but they were memories tinged with
warmth and affection. She smiled back at the lady in the
photograph, replaced it and ran her finger softly along the
spines of the row of books that were like old friends to her.
She slipped a black mourning band over her sleeve and
went out to the kitchen. The dough she had set by the range
the previous evening had risen overnight; she kneaded it and
put it into pans, and by the time the range had heated up the
bread was ready to go in.
Her father and brothers wandered into the kitchen some
time later, attracted by the smell of bacon and eggs. The four
of them ate a leisurely breakfast, and the men lingered over
second helpings while Amy washed the dishes.
Amy had just gone outside to feed the hens when she saw
riders coming up the track. It was her Uncle Arthur, who
owned the next farm up the valley, along with her cousin
Lizzie and Lizzie’s younger brother Alf.
Arthur slipped from his horse and went to have a chat
with Jack, eleven-year-old Alf close at his heels, while Amy
held Lizzie’s reins and the girls exchanged news.
‘Have you heard about the whale?’ Lizzie asked. ‘It got
washed up on the beach, Alf heard about it at school
yesterday. We’re going down to have a look, come with us.’
‘I don’t think I can, Lizzie, I’m busy this morning.’
‘Of course you can, it’ll only take an hour or so. Hop up
behind me, you don’t weigh much and Jessie’s strong.’ Lizzie
patted the roan mare’s rump.
‘I really can’t. I got a bit behind yesterday—I had to take
lunch to the men, and I ended up staying a while with them. I
didn’t even get any baking done. Maybe Pa and the boys will
go down later and I can go with them.’
‘But I want you to come with me. I tell you what,’ Lizzie
said, brightening, ‘if you come now, I’ll give you a hand with
your work afterwards. So you can come, can’t you?’
Amy laughed. Lizzie was only eighteen months older
than her, but as well as being several inches taller and much
more sturdily built, she was a good deal more determined.
Lizzie usually got her own way in the end; it generally saved
time to go along with her from the beginning. ‘All right,
Lizzie, you win.’ She took off her apron and ran back to the
kitchen with it before hoisting herself up behind the saddle
and putting her arms around her cousin’s waist. ‘What’ll
Aunt Edie say about you staying here to help me?’
‘Oh, Ma won’t mind.’ Handling her mother was never a
problem for Lizzie.
Arthur and Alf came back and remounted, and they set
off down the track at a walk. The sun had climbed above the
eastern wall of the valley, promising another bright, clear
day. A light breeze ruffled Amy’s hair, and there was still a
touch of dew on the grass. It was a fine day for an outing.
The steepest of the hills on both sides of the valley were
still bush-clad. Many of the tallest trees had been milled over
the years, but scattered among the lower-growing manuka
were lofty totara, rimu with their drooping foliage, and the
darker leaves of puriri. Where the forest canopy had been
removed tree ferns flourished, with an occasional nikau palm
among them looking like something from the pictures of
tropical islands Amy sometimes saw in her father’s
newspapers.
Nearer the house, the slopes had been burned off and
sown with grass years before. Shorthorn cattle wandered
among the blackened stumps that had survived the burning,
with sheep in the steeper paddocks. The farm’s only flat land
was in two paddocks edging the creek; here the stumps had
been laboriously hauled out and the ground ploughed, so that
maize and potatoes could be grown.