It was Libby who answered the knock on the door. Jack, following his sister down the hallway, looked over her shoulder at the man standing on the doorstep. A stranger, he was clean-shaven, hair gleaming black with Macassar oil. His tweed trousers and jacket, though well worn, were clean and he stood, respectfully, hat in hand.
‘Would your mother or father be in?’ he asked, his smile revealing glistening white teeth.
Jack was about to summon his mother when Libby slammed the door shut.
‘Mother!’ Jack yelled, elbowing Libby out of the way. ‘There’s a man at the door and Libby’s just shut the door in his face!’
Sylvia bustled out from the kitchen, her face creased with irritation. ‘How could you be so rude? You know better than that,’ she chided, easing past Jack and Libby and opening the door.
‘What can we do for you, Mr …?’ she called out to the man, who was walking away.
He turned and approached the door again. ‘Price — Arnold Price,’ he said, lifting his hat. ‘And you’ll be Mrs Budd, I’m thinking.’
‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Price,’ said Sylvia, a note of caution in her tone. ‘And what might your business be?’
‘I’m looking for work. I’m told your husband is after a man to help in the mill and with his furniture-making.’
Sylvia eyed Arnold Price from top to toe. Judging him safe enough, she nodded. ‘That’s so. He’ll be on his way home at this very moment. You’re welcome to come in and wait.’ Leading their visitor down the hallway, she extended a hand toward her son and daughter. ‘This is my son, Jack, just home from the mill, and my daughter, Libby.’
‘It’s pleased I am to meet you,’ said Arnold Price, shaking Jack’s hand. He smiled at Libby but she turned away, cutting him dead.
‘Manners, Libby,’ Sylvia scolded her, seeing Arnold’s surprised expression.
‘It’s a nice place you have here, Mrs Budd,’ he said, not seeming to take offence at Libby’s snub. His gaze roamed around the large kitchen, the spotless, painted wooden floors dotted with colourful rag mats.
Sylvia beamed. ‘It is indeed, if I do say so myself, Mr Price. We have a parlour, two bedrooms, and Mr Budd has recently built on a lean-to for Jack. It’s a far cry from the one-room shanty we lived in until Mr Budd prospered with his mill and cabinet-making.’
‘I’m fortunate to have called at a convenient time.’ Arnold Price hungrily eyed the scones Sylvia was buttering.
‘Indeed you are,’ Sylvia agreed. ‘I always have a pot of tea and scones waiting for Mr Budd when he arrives home.’ She noticed Libby staring at their visitor and flashed her a warning look. ‘You must excuse Libby, she’s a little slow and cannot speak well.’
‘She can’t speak at all most of the time,’ Jack said, helping himself to a scone.
‘Jack! That will do now!’ Sylvia picked up the plate and held it out to their visitor.
Arnold Price picked up a scone, devouring it in one bite. ‘Ah! She cannot hear, then?’ he mumbled through his mouthful.
‘She can hear perfectly well. And she can talk, though not well,’ Sylvia said.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend, Mrs Budd,’ Arnold Price said quickly. He glanced in Libby’s direction. ‘She’ll be good company for you, then.’
‘Yes … yes, she is.’ Sometimes, Sylvia thought, relaxing as their visitor began a lively commentary about his travels around the country and the number of people he’d encountered from all around the world when he’d visited the magnificent Franz Josef and Fox glaciers further down the West Coast.
‘I’ve never seen them myself, despite them being so close,’ she confessed.
‘Ah, well now, that’s a great pity, Mrs Budd. You must get your husband to take you there one of these days. I tell you, those great sweeping falls of ice … It’s like a giant jug of milk’s been poured down the mountains and frozen solid. They’re a wondrous sight, they truly are.’
Sylvia listened, entranced, feeling almost let down when Nipper, their small brown-and-white spotted terrier, trotted into the kitchen heralding the arrival of her husband.
Will, too, seemed taken with Arnold Price, nodding with interest as their visitor explained his business, and inviting him to share their evening meal.
‘You’re well spoken of, Mr Budd, both in Stafford and Hokitika,’ Price said, once they’d finished eating their roast beef and vegetables.
Will’s cheeks glowed as he gave a modest inclination of his head.
‘They say you’ve a fine mill and cabinet-making business.’
‘I’ve done my bit,’ said Will. ‘But I’m falling behind with orders at the moment. I’ve enough green timber to supply my customers wanting it for houses, bridging and the like, but green timber’s no good for furniture. No good at all. Needs to dry for at least twelve months. And pit-sawing’s slow. A lot of saw millers are using steam engines to drive circular saws these days. They get through the logs in a mighty hurry with those, they do.’
‘You’ll be after a steam engine, then?’
Will shrugged. ‘In time … I’ve had a look-see at one in Davidson’s, the engineers in Hokitika, but they don’t come cheap. I may be able to get a more reasonably priced one from the Dispatch Foundry in Greymouth, but there’s the cost of freight too. A steam engine’s not light to transport. We’d never make it up No Name Hill if we tried to bring it in by dray. Only way would be to ship it from Grey to Hokitika, and that would likely even out the cost so there’d be no advantage in doing so.’
‘I say buy one and to hang with the expense,’ Jack chipped in.
Will grinned. ‘That’s youth for you. All for progress and not a care for the cost.’ He gave Jack’s ear an affectionate cuff.
‘And you’re keen to learn cabinet-making, you say?’ he asked Price later, as they tucked into a rich fruit pudding swimming in thick, fresh cream.
‘I am, Mr Budd. I’ve no experience, mind. But I learn quickly and I can work a saw as well as the next man. I’d be grateful if you’d consider me kindly.’
Will looked thoughtful, then nodded. ‘We’ll see. I’ll give you a week’s work and if you pass muster, I may think about taking you on.’
Sylvia covertly examined their visitor, guessing him to be around five or six years younger than her and Will, which would make him about thirty-five. He was certainly presentable, and still young enough to be a good help to Will. She dearly hoped he’d prove suitable. Will was so busy these days, particularly since Matthew Card, who had worked for him for the past three years, had left for Christchurch.
Jack had been a boon to his father since leaving school two years before, but at fifteen he still had the lean build of a boy and hadn’t yet acquired a man’s strength. She knew that at the mill Will favoured the boy at his own expense, but she worried the work might still be too much for their son.
Will’s furniture-making had come about by accident. He had discovered a natural flair for the craft when making their own furniture. Visitors had admired it and orders had eventually begun to come in — first a trickle, then thick and fast. Life had been a struggle before then, with Will working from daylight till dark clearing the land, milling and making furniture, while she’d tended the house and vegetable garden, and seen to milking their cow.
Money had been scarce and it had often been the earnings from her butter and cheese that had kept them going. Even so, there had been times when, unable to afford even the cheapest tallow candles, let alone oil, they would have spent their winter evenings and mornings in the dark if Henry and Mai Bramwell hadn’t given them credit, letting their bill creep far higher than most shopkeepers would have.
Whoever would have thought they would end up doing so well? Filled with pride, she looked at Will. His sun-weathered and freckled face animated, he was explaining the finer points of timber types to Arnold Price. Though his eyes were permanently red-rimmed from sawdust dropping into them when he was sawing under the logs in the pit, and grey hair had replaced the sandy fairness of his youth, he seemed more lively and younger somehow than he had then. Proof, if one needed it — and Sylvia did not — that prosperity was an infinitely more desirable state than poverty. She smiled, thinking of the pony-trap Will had recently bought for her so she could drive herself to Stafford and not have to wait until he had time to take her in the wagon.
If Will decided this fellow was suitable, then once he was familiar with the way of things, her husband could leave some of the heavier work to the new man and maybe take some time off from his endless toil. He’d been looking tired of late. It would do him good to rest up a while.
‘I’ve nigh on finished that chest of drawers for the Bramwells,’ Jack said to his father, breaking into Sylvia’s ruminations.
‘Good lad,’ said Will, with a brief glance at Jack before patting the seat beside him and beckoning to Libby. ‘Come sit with your old dad, Libby.’
Sylvia noted Jack’s hurt expression at his efforts being dismissed so casually, and the father and daughter’s adoring smiles for each other. It was unfair the way Will pandered to Libby at the expense of his son.
As she’d done many times in the past, she eyed Libby, marvelling at her pleasing appearance, so at odds with her peculiar ways. Delicately boned, her wrists so thin they seemed in danger of snapping in a good frost, her hair the lightest shade of gold and her skin so translucently pale, people had often said she looked like an angel. But the child’s ethereal appearance belied her resilience. Her ability to lift the heavy cast-iron cooking pots was testament to that. It wasn’t Libby’s physical condition that worried Sylvia. It was her fits and her inability to speak, her quick temper and, worst of all, her habit of seeing things.
Too many times for peace of mind, Libby had told them of seeing someone they’d later found had just passed away. And sometimes she seemed to know about things before they happened. Sylvia hugged her arms around her body, unable to suppress a shiver as she recalled the first time it had happened — when Libby had seen Donald MacKinnon.
Will looked up. ‘Aye, winter may nearly be over, but the nights are still chilly enough to seep into your bones,’ he commented, misinterpreting her tremors.
Libby moved from her father’s side and began collecting the plates from the table. Arnold Price smiled at her, but Libby’s face remained grave.
‘Not given to smiling much, is she?’ he remarked. ‘Ah … I mean she’s a solemn child …’ he corrected himself, seeing Will’s sudden frown.
‘She’s not had a lot to smile about,’ Will said abruptly. ‘It’s hard for the lass not being able to speak as well as she should.’
Sylvia had been about to protest that Libby had more to be thankful for than many — especially the way she was spoiled by her father. But Will’s frown changed her mind. He was a good man and slow to rile, but when he did, even Nipper, who trotted after him with slavish devotion, would disappear until her master’s mood lightened.
‘Life is not easy for her,’ she said instead.
‘Be careful with those eggs, Libby,’ Sylvia cautioned the next morning, checking her urge to take over and pack the fragile objects herself.
Libby, mouth pursed in concentration, took an egg from a basket, placed it in a cardboard box half-filled with sawdust, then scattered the sawdust around the egg. It seemed to Sylvia that she did so at an agonisingly slow pace. The eggs were destined for their neighbours, a mile up the road. New to the area, as yet they had no fowls of their own.
Sylvia turned and picked up the box lid, her petticoats and dress swishing as she did so. Distracted, Libby looked around, and dropped an egg on the floor.
Sylvia groaned. Mishaps were inevitable with Libby.
‘I-I c-c-clean,’ Libby stuttered, kneeling, the tip of one of her long plaits, and the blue ribbon securing it, dipping into the egg yolk on the floor.
‘Out of the way! I’ll do it myself.’
Sylvia shook her head in despair to see bright yellow stain the bib of her daughter’s previously spotless white apron. Lord only knew, it would have been so much quicker to do these chores herself, but Will insisted on her letting Libby help.
‘How will she ever learn if you don’t teach her — help her and show her how these things are done?’ he always said when, impatient and at her wits’ end, Sylvia would move in to take over whatever task Libby had made a sow’s ear of.
He was right, of course, but if only he realised how much work the girl’s clumsiness caused. Every day at least one apron was dirtied. The new neighbour’s two daughters managed several days with one, sometimes a full week, so she’d told Sylvia yesterday when she’d come calling.
If there was a muddied puddle within a mile of Libby’s being, she would find it and, no matter her hems being above the tops of her boots, somehow or other she would manage to dirty them. Keeping Libby clean and tidy was a never-ending battle. Sylvia was forever drying and brushing the hem of the girl’s heavier Sunday dress, and washing her lighter cottons. Mostly, Sylvia managed to remain philosophical about Libby’s fits, her muteness and her odd ways, but sometimes, like now, the simplest mishap suddenly seemed too much to bear.
How different her life might have been if not for Libby’s accident.