A Time for Courage

by Margaret Graham

  He told her how he had already felled his own trees with his tutor alongside, how he had ripped them into one-inch, two-inch or larger planks but he stopped when Hannah looked puzzled at the word ‘ripped’ and explained that he had sawn them along the grain. He told her how he had stored the planks, held apart by slats of wood to let the air through and would now let them lie until his course was finished – in three years.

  ‘To season them of course, you London girl,’ he laughed.

  He pointed to the treadle lathe in the corner. ‘That’s my real beauty,’ he boasted.

  Hannah smiled at its size, at the height of the heavy wooden flywheel, and the gearing which transmitted the movement of the treadle up and down to turn the work continuously in the right direction. His hands as he showed how he was working some elm wagon-hubs were dextrous, and when he cut himself on some raw wood and she ran the tap hard into the wound she knew that they were as hard as they had always been.

  He sat with her at the table and this time she left the tea he poured her until it was warm and she told him that her mother would live – but for how long? She told him that Harry had begun at the London School of Mines; that Esther was teaching too and was just the same, living for the fun which life could offer, and she laughed to think of her golden hair and the smile which danced across her face. But she didn’t tell him of Arthur, of the dance, of Lady Wilmot’s visit, of the Zoological Gardens, for now that seemed a great distance away; too far. It was better to stay here, with Joe.

  She told him of Miss Fletcher, of the handbills they delivered, the letters they wrote to Members of Parliament, lobbying them to support female suffrage. Of the terrible emptiness inside her as she heard of the women campaigning loudly in the northern villages against the injustice of the female textile workers being asked by their unions to contribute sixpence a week toward the Labour candidate’s election campaign though still barred from voting. Of the Pankhursts who were making their voices heard and who were shouting.

  She stood up and walked to the sink, leaning on it, gripping the cold stone, seeing the green drip mark under the tap; turning from it and walking back again, past the marigolds, away from the bed, picking up the paper fan which lay on the table, remembering Joe’s made of ivory.

  She looked at him and he was sitting back, his arm along the table, his eyes on her.

  ‘I can’t shout, Joe. I can’t do anything.’ She could feel the tears wet on her face but her voice was steady. How strange. It was not as though she was crying at all; and why was she crying, because she did not cry in front of people, but Joe was not people, he was hers.

  He was still looking at her, not speaking.

  ‘Eliza said my mother must have a measure of peace, her health must take priority and so it must because I could not bear it if she died, but I want my freedom too, Joe. My plan was always to break free of that house, of its restraints, and fight for equality but now I can do nothing, though others are beginning. If I long for my freedom it means that I long for her death because that is the only way I shall ever be free now. I love her so, Joe, but I am being ground into nothingness. My life is empty, my plans are finished. I’m too tired, too helpless.’ And now the tears were running into her mouth but still her voice had not crumpled.

  She stood in front of him now, wanting the touch of his hand, wanting his arm about her, wanting his body close so that she could lean into him and not have to think or struggle any more. Stay with me, he had said, when the storm raged and that is what she wanted, for ever, and she knew that this was a very big word. Her eyes were closed and she waited for him to come to her and she felt him rise and his hands grip her arms and then his voice lashed out and caught her, slapping her eyes open, tightening her muscles.

  ‘How dare you stand there and tell me your plans have been ruined! Your freedom spoilt just because you cannot fight for some future vote which you have just showed very clearly you don’t deserve.’

  His voice still drawled but it was deep and hard. He shook her, and his face was close to her, his eyes dark, his lips drawn back, thinned by his anger. Hannah felt him and heard him and could not understand. She saw the table, the treadle, her jewellery box. She felt her breath which had caught in her throat. What was he saying, why was he shouting like this? He should have been kind, strong. She wanted to stop his words but he kept on talking.

  ‘I’m ashamed of you, Hannah Watson. What of your teaching?’

  She tore from him then, her anger and her disappointment cutting too deep to be borne. This was not what she needed, not what she expected from Joe.

  ‘Haven’t you been listening, Joe? I do teach, I nurse too but that is not all that is needed. Women need to fight and I can’t fight. Not until I leave home and that will only be when my mother is dead.’

  ‘Sit down, Hannah.’ He pushed her on to the chair but she struggled to rise, knocking the fan to the floor. ‘Sit down, I said.’ He was big over her and his eyes did not leave hers. She tried to look away but he held her head.

  ‘Out there, in those streets you walked through, in the streets behind your grand and glorious crescent there are women who need knowledge, who need self-confidence. There are women like your mother, crippled by childbearing. Women who need to be told about birth control; pessaries, sponges. Women who need to be told not to use quinine or syringes. You of all people know that. Have you forgotten so much of what you said last year?’

  Hannah pushed his hand from her, turned away. The kettle was bubbling on the stove. She would not listen to this. It was not what a man should speak of to a woman, even Joe to her. This was not why she had come. She had come for love, for support, not for this. All this which had come so quickly out of nowhere. Hadn’t she been through enough?

  And this is what she screamed at him, hearing her voice, seeing him move back from the spittle which came from her mouth, but she didn’t care. He had turned from her when she needed him. How could he hurt her in this way? He was hers and now he had turned from her.

  ‘Haven’t I been through enough?’ And it was a scream.

  ‘No, Hannah, you have not been through enough. You have been through very little.’ He was pulling her to her feet now. ‘There are women who need you, women who want the sort of help you can give. Look at your mother, Hannah. She is the one who has been through enough. Remember the moor, Hannah. Since then all that you have done has been for yourself, for your own satisfaction.’

  He was turning her now, towards the door. How could he say that? What of the nursing, the hours of care?

  ‘You are the daughter your father thinks you are, weak and frightened and feeble, and I won’t have it. You are worth more than that, you can do more. Dutiful daughters nurse; you are more than a dutiful daughter, you have forgotten yourself.’

  He was dragging her towards the door.

  ‘Leave me alone, you’re just a raw colonial with no breeding. You have no right to touch me. Leave me alone.’

  She was hitting him now, wanting to hurt him as he was hurting her, wanting to smash the months of trust, the pictures she had held close of their time together, but he didn’t turn and they were through the door.

  ‘You want the vote, don’t you? Well, my girl, until you can join in that particular struggle you should be teaching women to be able to cope with that sort of responsibility. You should be teaching them that life does not have to be one long pregnancy, that children do not have to die.’ He was panting now, pulling her down each dark, dank step as she fought against him. ‘You should be teaching women how to read, how to manage what little money they have. You should be preparing them for the vote, you stupid silly girl. Not sitting feeling sorry for yourself. You have the facilities at Miss Fletcher’s. You have the time. Tell your mother. She might help, especially now after the last child. You won’t have to leave her to do this; to work towards something just as important as chasing the vote. You have the talent but not the grit. You don’t deserve the vote.’

  ‘Let me
alone. I want to go home.’ She wrenched one hand free and hit his face, feeling his lip burst beneath the force of her blow and there was blood on his teeth, red against white and she wanted to cry because it had all gone so wrong. He was moving away from her, like Harry had done.

  And suddenly they were both quiet, the struggle was finished, but he did not release her arm.

  ‘So you want to go home or is it that you are really rushing to this Honourable Arthur that Eliza has told me so much about? Is it this man that has wiped so much of importance from your mind?’ His smile was twisted now and he made no effort to wipe away the blood which ran down his chin. ‘Well, before you go to wherever it is you are going you will see that there is much you can do, Miss Watson.’ He inclined his head in a mock bow and forced her down the remaining stairs to the room on the landing below his. He knocked and pulled her after him as he entered.

  There were three small children on the bed, which had rags sewn together to make sheets. The floor was covered with made and unmade and half-made matchboxes. There were no chairs and a young woman with a lined, drawn face sat on the floor. Her hair was unkempt and fell forward across her face. Her scraped patent leather boots, buttoned at the side, were visible beneath her torn skirt. She looked up at Joe and he smiled.

  ‘I have a friend with me who would like to see just how the matchboxes that her dear father uses are made.’

  Hannah tried to jerk her arm free but he held it like a vice. The woman nodded, not smiling, not showing anything on her face or in her dull eyes. They were like Mother’s, Hannah thought. The children lay quiet on the bed but they were not asleep. Their eyes also watched her and were dull too. Dirt was everywhere and mingled with the light from the small cracked window and the brown streaked walls was a smell of sweat and cabbage.

  Joe pulled her further into the room. Hannah wouldn’t look but he squeezed her arm until the pain made her want to call out and then she watched as one motion of the woman’s dirty hands with their cracked and blackened nails bent into shape the notched frame of the case. She watched as another strip with a ready-pasted printed wrapper was instantly fitted and then the sandpaper which had been ready pasted beforehand was applied and pressed, so that the woman’s face strained with effort. She threw it on to the floor.

  ‘To dry,’ Joe said.

  The woman then took the long narrow strip which formed the frame of the drawer and placed it on the ready-pasted paper which was the base. This she bent and stuck to the drawer frame and threw on the floor too.

  ‘To dry,’ Joe said again. His was the only voice in the room. ‘All this has to be done one hundred and forty-four times for twopence-farthing. Then each drawer and case has to be fitted together and the packets tied up with hemp. Isn’t that right, Mary?’

  Hannah watched as Mary nodded. She looked at the children again. They had not moved. There was stale bread on the table cut into thick wedges.

  ‘Mary is having another child soon, aren’t you?’ Joe did not look at Hannah, but at the woman, who nodded though she still did not speak.

  Joe looked at the children. ‘If it is damp a fire must be kept up or the paste will not dry. The fire, paste and hemp must all be paid for out of the worker’s pocket. Her husband has no work; he drinks.’

  Joe turned suddenly, jerking Hannah and then dropping his hand from her arm and when he did that, she felt alone. He walked towards the door, not looking to see if she was following. She smiled at the woman who looked down at the boxes, working again. The children had still not moved.

  Joe was climbing the stairs when she left the room. ‘Joe,’ she called.

  He stopped but did not turn to look at her. ‘Go home, Hannah, or back to Arthur. I am ashamed of you.’

  She looked at him, standing with his back to her, refusing even to look in her direction and it hurt too much.

  ‘Well, I am going to see him,’ she cried out, her hand at her throat, the air and the darkness stifling her. ‘I’m going to the Zoological Gardens and taking tea with a gentleman.’

  He turned then and she saw his face and it was white and his hair seemed dark against it. ‘Yes, you do that, little English lady. Go and gawp at the creatures neatly behind bars where they cannot intrude and then return to your mannered empty life.’ His voice was low, all anger gone and she turned from him, her own anger rising, hearing him call as she left.

  ‘Remember that it was you who called it a terrible emptiness, my Hannah, my Cornish girl.’

  He heard the door into the street slam. He had known that she would slam it and he wished he could have taken back the time which he had just spent with her, taken it back and shaped it differently, more gently; coaxed her into the life she should be living, bring her back close to him but it was too late, too sudden and too late.

  She would be walking back to the Fulham Road now, hailing a hansom, turning her face and her life away from him to Arthur. Why had such cruel and clumsy words poured from his mouth? He thought of Cornwall, saw the sun and the trout they had caught and the storm. London was different, he knew that now.

  He walked slowly up the stairs, into his room. Her gloves were still there and the jewellery box. He would send the box to her but not the gloves for they were all he had left of her now, along with his memories, and he lifted them to his lips, holding them hard to his mouth, wanting to feel the pain where she had struck him.

  The tea was served in bone china as they sat on the terrace overlooking the rhododendrons of the gardens. In the distance Hannah could hear the animals as they roared or chattered or called. Children ran past them while their parents sat; the women under parasols, the men still in their top hats.

  Esther was laughing. ‘Go on, do tell us how your American is. Has he made you any quaint little boxes recently?’ She turned to Arthur. ‘Hannah has this little American who is frightfully good with his hands and sends her little gifts.’

  Hannah stirred her tea. Arthur was smiling, his silk handkerchief dark green in his breast pocket, his hand lazily clasping his umbrella above the silk. Harry looked irritable.

  ‘You’re not going to see that Joe fellow, surely? Father would be most displeased.’

  Hannah continued to stir her tea. No, she would not be seeing Joe again. He was changed, different. She sought for words to block out the memory of his words, his hand on her arm. He was too hard, too brash. She would never think of him again, never long to be near him again and she would not miss him. No, she must decide never to miss him and she shook her head. Pain and anger mingled; fighting, hurting.

  She looked across at Harry. Friends and brothers had a nasty habit of hurting.

  ‘No, I will not be seeing Joe, so don’t fret, brother dear.’ And she smiled as Arthur smiled, nodded as he nodded but as they all left the terrace and strolled back towards his carriage she could still feel Joe’s grip on her arm and wondered if there was a bruise, and if so, how long it would remain, for when it was gone Joe was also gone and so too the Cornish summer sun. She could still hear his anger, his contempt, and her words which she had spat at him, a raw colonial with no breeding, and knew that a great deal had been lost today.

  10

  The train whistle shrieked and the dark of the tunnel gave way to light, though it was a grey cold light. It was 1907 and spring was late this year, Hannah thought, as she looked out on to freshly turned fields. There were not many primroses in the banks but then they were north of Oundle and Arthur had said it would be colder up here which was why he preferred the London house. She hoped that he would be there to meet the train when they arrived; the wind, which was jogging the hedgerows as they passed, was strong enough to be cold.

  She settled back in the first-class compartment, letting the curtain fall back into place, watching Esther laughing into Harry’s face, her hair coiled under the large grey hat, her well cut light wool suit matching perfectly the darker grey of the ribbon which decorated the brim. The girlish looks had gone and at twenty-one Esther was a beautiful woman.


  Harry bent and kissed Esther’s hand and Hannah turned back to the window. There were woods in the distance now, still brown. The pear tree at home was budding, though there was no blossom yet, and her mother was waiting for the pale green tinged flowers that meant the end of winter. She tried to breathe evenly, to push away the anxiety which came in a sudden wave of heat and pulled at the leather window strap which was hooked on to the brass knob. It was too hot in here, she thought, anger stirring; she wanted some air but if she opened the window the noise would be worse.

  Would Mother be all right? Would Eliza keep Beaky under control? Would she keep the curtains drawn back to let the light in as her mother preferred? She ran her fingers over her lips. Would her father let her mother take her meals in her room? She ate so much better at the window which looked out on the pear tree. Hannah felt hotter still; she shouldn’t have left her alone, not even for this weekend. And then she saw that Harry was looking at her, at her fingers which were playing over her mouth, and she made herself smile.

  ‘I hope Mother will be all right, that she’ll not be too unhappy while I’m away,’ she said and could hear that her voice was too high, too taut.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Hannah, it’s only two days and Eliza’s her sister after all. She’ll know better than you what keeps Mother content.’

  Hannah said nothing. The train was labouring now up a slight incline which was leading to a small hamlet. No one knew her mother better than she did, she wanted to shout into his face, but he had turned again to Esther’s. So she did not shout. She must not shout, must she? The last time she had shouted had been at Joe and he had been right, hadn’t he? But how could she ever tell him, after speaking to him as she had. No, I must not shout. Say it ten times, Miss Watson, and she smelt the classroom and the chalk and the children who sat in rows. No, I must not shout. And now she was saying it in time with the wheels as they clicked over the joints in the track. And she must not think of Joe, not any more and she seldom did, except when marigolds bloomed and the wind roared or gulls called or … but now she clenched her mind shut, tugging at the tiredness which pulled at her, looking out of the carriage, out to where the air was buffeting and pushing at the clouds.