A Time for Courage

by Margaret Graham

  She had written letters, walked to Town Halls, talked to the authorities and sometimes been able to help, but did Frances realise the scale of the problem, did Harry?

  Sitting on the arm of her chair, she told Frances that the local factory had closed because its goods had been exported to Germany and there was now no market. Women had lost their jobs. There were no others because other workshops were closing also but prices were rising all the time; coal and flour were expensive. The Poor Relief was worse than inadequate. People were starving.

  ‘Did you know,’ she asked, ‘that the separation allowance for those whose husbands have enlisted is only one shilling and one penny a day with twopence for each child? Rent is usually about six shillings a week. The husbands can make an allotment up to half of their pay but more often than not it doesn’t come through and a soldier’s pay is far less than his previous wage. With the factories closing more men are going. It’s a vicious circle. My women are starving. Those who are nursing babies are dry.’ She dug at the rug with her toe. ‘They need milk and albumen water for the babies. They need food; at least one meal a day but they don’t want charity. They’ve been forgotten by the politicians, who are too busy to realise that there’s a home front which needs to survive too, somehow. I think that’s where our fight is.’

  Frances sat down opposite, smoothing her skirt then leaning forward, her hand under her chin, her eyes calm. The fire was smoking slightly and Hannah stooped and used the bellows.

  ‘You want to feed them, to use our school kitchens but charge a very small rate, say one penny a meal?’ Frances asked.

  Hannah smiled, still working the bellows, watching as the coals began to glow red. The fire irons were glinting and the gas lamp was hissing, giving out enough light to warm the room on this dull day. ‘So you have been thinking too?’

  ‘Yes, I have seen you rushing in and out, writing long letters, swearing under your breath.’ Frances smiled. ‘Not at all ladylike but very understandable.’

  Hannah put the bellows down on the hearth and rubbed her hands before sitting back in her chair. ‘Well, what do you think? Can we do it? I thought we could employ the women to cook and pay them. That solves more than one problem for it feeds them but they keep their self-respect.’

  Frances sat back, her eyes on Hannah. ‘But with what do we pay them, dear Hannah?’ she chanted.

  Hannah looked from her to the window, to Harry brushing at the leaves. Were there leaves or trees left where the guns were firing, she wondered? She picked at her dress.

  ‘I’m going to ask Harry. He is rich and has nothing on which to concentrate but I want him to help us organise as well as fund it. He must be kept busy, Frances, or he will go mad. Another feather came in the post today. Anonymously, of course.’ Her voice was bitter.

  Frances touched her hand. Her voice was low as she said, ‘You’re not a stranger to persecution so don’t let this affect you.’

  Hannah looked at her and nodded but it was hard when the persecuted was someone you loved. But now was not the time to think of this. She rose, taking a pencil from the mantelshelf, pulling out a notebook from her apron pocket. Her voice became brisk as she sat down again. The mirror above the mantelshelf was picking up the colour of the fire and the prints on the opposite walls were alive with the reflected glow.

  ‘We’ll need to arrange for someone to look after the children of the workers too. I thought I could do that. If you are agreeable?’ She sucked the pencil, the lead was bitter and the paint flaked off in her mouth. She picked it from her tongue and threw it on the fire. She looked up and smiled as Frances nodded. ‘I also think that we could use some of the classrooms as workrooms. Just because there is a war on doesn’t mean people no longer need clothes. Could we not start some sort of a sewing workshop, employ more women? If Harry will let us have the capital of course.’

  She listened as Frances suggested that they use the toys which the smaller pupils had used on wet days, that Cook should teach the women how to cook in large quantities. ‘And us too.’ She laughed. Hannah suggested they toss to see who should peel the potatoes. She looked out into the fog again; Harry was coughing and the leaves were gathered into two piles. He was scooping them up and carrying them to the old wooden wheelbarrow. His hands were white with cold but he would not wear gloves or allow himself any form of comfort; it was as though he needed to suffer.

  Hannah walked quickly to the window and knocked on the glass, beckoning to him. He straightened but pointed to the leaves and it was only when he had finished that he returned to the house, wearing only socks when he came into the sitting-room because his boots were clogged with mud.

  He would not sit near the fire which was burning strongly by now but sat well back in a dark green chair near to the bookcase. Hannah wanted to bring him nearer; to rub his hands and bring some warmth to his thin body. He nodded as she talked to him but his face did not change, his eyes still saw something other than this room; his ears something other than her voice, but he did agree and so they began that day after he had talked to his solicitor and secured the funds.

  Hannah wrote to Joe to tell him but the letter was brief and spoke only of her scheme because she would not think of men any more, not yet. She and Frances flung on coats and scarves and ran panting to their Sunday ladies and brought them back to the house. She peeled potatoes with Irene whose husband had been killed in the first month and their hair became limp from the steam of their cooking. Frances went out with Beatrice and they posted letters through doors and stuck posters on walls. Harry brought down toys from the loft, pushed desks back against the walls so that there was room for the children to play. He dragged tables into the assembly hall and helped the Sunday ladies to lay out the tables. Not many came that day but as the week wore on more and more arrived, Maureen too. Hannah hugged her, glad to have her friend with her again. Harry bought machines for the sewing workshop and paid the women eighteen shillings a week, but still his face did not change or his voice become more than a monotone and so Hannah brought him into the kindergarten with her. She showed him the children as they broke each toy, systematically and brutally. He watched with her as their faces and eyes did not change during their activities.

  ‘It’s the war,’ she said and he nodded, turning from the room, and she wanted to run after him, drag him back, make him come alive again but instead she knelt by a girl with curls and a dirty face and held her close, taking the broken doll from her, hiding the rolling eyes, the cracked skull, seeing again the doll at Penbrin. She held the child and talked and told her of the giant who lived in the clouds and watered his garden and made it rain on the world so that flowers grew and colours filled the gardens but still there was no expression in those eyes or in any of the others that now looked and listened as she told them of the mermaid and the prince.

  Harry came in again. He had wood and nails, a saw and a plane, and he took the boys, and the girls too, and showed them how they were going to mend the toys and look after them carefully. He told them how they were going to make a house and sweep it and keep it clean; how they were going to play games and look after one another and his voice was alive now and he listened to the voices which spoke to him and heard them rather than the sound of his own guilt, his own grief, and so it was the children who brought back some life into her brother and in turn he made the children’s eyes light up and their actions became gentle, building not breaking.

  The stones still came through the window and the feathers in the post but he just worked harder. Hannah asked him to help move beds into the classrooms on the top floor because the hospitals were full of war-wounded so that there was no room for the civilian sick, but that did not mean that they did not exist, and they had space here to take them, hadn’t they?

  The doctors began to send their patients to the school and Harry and Hannah nursed them and Frances helped and so did the women Hannah had taught on Sunday mornings. She moved amongst the beds, bathing, soothing and comforting. Helpin
g with the birth of babies; with depression because a telegram had been received to say that a husband or a son or a brother was dead; with illness caused by deprivation.

  She talked to the doctor who had cared for Harry and he agreed to call each day and the rooms smelt of lavender and oil lamps and there was a peace growing within her and slowly her father was being sponged from her mind as she washed down the women and the children.

  Beatrice helped in the kindergarten and Cook taught the women in the kitchens and Hannah and Frances worked until they dropped into bed at night and Harry worked even harder but still she heard him walking in his room and knew that peace was far from him, as distant as it was for the rest of the world.

  By Christmas more husbands and sons were posted as missing or dead but a few returned and were full of gas, or had no feet, or arms or no legs and there were no provisions for them to improve and then find work. Her feet ached from walking from office to office seeking pensions and allowances and so she wrote to Joe, asking if these men could come down to Penbrin with their women too and their children because they needed good air and freedom from the war.

  When she received his reply she stopped rushing and sat down and read the words again on a cold morning when frost had crisped the leafless tree and petrified the grass. Her toast lay uneaten and her tea grew cold. Frances looked at Harry and they waited in the silent room.

  Dear Hannah,

  I’m so glad you have written and I think it is a swell idea but Harry will have to come and run Penbrin. I have enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps. Eliza has said she will help Harry. It might be as well to get him away from London before the casualty lists get longer and bitterness grows. I don’t know where I’ll be, Hannah, but write to me if you would like to hear from me. The waiting has proved to be very long.

  With love from Joe.

  She felt tired, sitting in the chair. Her hair hung lank on her forehead, her apron was clean but not starched. She ran her hands down it, smoothing the creases, smoothing the paper too. How could he go? He was American. She looked up as Frances came and Harry.

  ‘How can Joe go, he’s American?’ She knew her voice was rising as she thrust the letter at the grey-haired woman, watching her as she read it, seeing the calm eyes lifting to face her.

  ‘His mother was English. Had you forgotten?’ Frances asked.

  Hannah slumped back into the chair. Yes, she had forgotten but how could she? And how could he go and leave her? Didn’t he know that she loved him, that he did not need to wait any longer? Why hadn’t she stopped long enough to know? The endless days and nights, the sickness, the need had pushed him away, and her father, but it was there, all there. She knew that now and he should have known too. He knew her better than she knew herself, didn’t he?

  She felt her finger rub her lips and she repeated the words to herself. She loved him even though she had never told him, never told herself. She wanted to scream the words. He knew that, surely he knew that. She looked out at the grey cold again. Was it too late to tell him?

  She looked up at Frances and took the letter back. With love from Joe, he said. Did he mean it? She thought of the men without feet, hands, eyes, those who were dead, and he was amongst that now. For a moment she wanted to scream at Harry, ‘But you’re not, are you? It’s Joe who’ll die.’ But it was panic saying those things. She knew that and she turned her head away from him so that he could not see her eyes. She saw the books, dark on the shelves and then the desk and moved, running to it, taking pen and paper and writing.

  Dearest Joe,

  Don’t go. I love you. I need you. Stay with me, Joe.

  She folded the letter once, twice and put it in the envelope, licking the flap, the stamp and running out of the room, out of the house and down the road to the post office. He would receive it tomorrow. He wouldn’t have gone by then, would he? He mustn’t go, not yet.

  Eliza wrote saying that Joe had left the day he wrote to Hannah but she had forwarded the letter, though mail was difficult for the troops, she added, so it might be held up. You must be patient. Could Harry come at once with the first batch of wounded because Sam had his nurse’s cap on and looked lovely in his frock. Don’t worry about Joe, he’s a good pilot, he’s been taking lessons at the aerodrome as you suggested.

  The next day Hannah folded linen for the men and rolled the bandages for Eliza and packed them into the second valise that Harry would carry and decided she would not think of the death-rate for the aviators. She would not think of the guns, the anti-aircraft fire, the German aces, or she would go mad. As she packed the men into the taxi with the women and the children she decided she would not think of his wide grin, his red-blond hair.

  She turned back into the house, her coat drawn about her and found that Harry was ready and she held him, drawing him to her, holding his face in her hands and told him to look after the men, but she meant look after yourself and he understood.

  At the station she gripped his arm as they pushed through the khaki throng and sheltered him from a woman who shouted, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’ But she could tell from his face that he had heard.

  Frances wheeled the man with no feet and Harry lifted him into the train, helping the others, holding the smallest child, and as the whistle blew he turned to Hannah. It was all going too fast for her and somewhere Joe would be wearing khaki like all these men and she wanted to hold on to Harry, on to someone she loved who was alive and whom she could feel, here, next to her.

  ‘Thank you, Hannah, for all you’ve done.’ He bent to kiss her and she took his other hand. Veins were raised on the still tanned skin. She kissed his palm. It was cold.

  ‘I love you, Harry,’ she murmured and he pulled her to him again.

  ‘And I love you, my dear,’ he said and turned, stepping up into the train, not looking back as he stepped over the legs of those already sitting. She wanted to pull him back, keep him with her, hear his footsteps throughout the night but she slammed the door, feeling the milling and pushing around her, hearing the whistles, the feet.

  ‘Come back,’ she called, running now along the platform, tearing from Frances’s grasp. ‘Come back.’ He was at the window now but she could not see his face. He was too far away and the train was too fast, people were in the way and her breath was rasping in her throat. The train was grunting and gasping past her and now he was gone and she had not been brave enough to tell him that this morning she had heard from Uncle Thomas, that Esther and Arthur had been married last week.

  The crocuses and snowdrops had forced themselves through the grass beneath the lime tree and the sky was blue. 1915 was proving to be an expensive year for Arthur’s bit of excitement, she thought ironically. There had been another zeppelin raid last night; twenty killed. She had taken the children to the cellars and left them with Frances and had returned to sit with the women who were too sick to be moved from their beds. They had heard the growling of the engines and then the thud of the bombs which had not been close enough this time to knock the plaster from the walls or the shouts from their mouths. The fear had surged though, and she had gripped the sheet of the woman in labour and tears had run as the ground shook and the woman screamed. Was there no end to the war?

  Maureen’s husband had been killed at a place called Ypres but Maureen hadn’t cried yet and she must, Hannah knew that she must, for she had been through it with so many of them. As the sun warmed the morning she took the children out into the fresh air and walked them in a crocodile past lamp-posts which had the glass painted to dim the glow.

  The children bet with one another a farthing that on this walk they would see a policeman riding with a placard on his back warning them all to take cover and Hannah smiled as they laughed when one did pass on his bicycle with his helmet strap above his chin whistling and wobbling but not warning them of an air raid. Scarborough and Whitley Bay had been bombarded by the German Navy and on a fine day it was said that the guns of France could be heard on the south coast. Would
that be from the Somme where Matthew’s father had been killed?

  She looked down at the boy who held her hand. He was smiling and she was glad that he could now do so. They walked back to the house, into the room which was hung with children’s paintings. Some were of flowers; the purple, white and yellow crocuses, the blue cornflowers which had bloomed in the meadows last summer. Some were of families and one included the father. Some were of sausage-shaped zeppelins.

  Hannah gave them milk and biscuits which Cook and the women had made but they were not sweet for sugar was scarce again. They sat on two layers of carpet; the top one was an Indian rug with an irregular pattern and she ran her finger round its edge. The children were quiet while they ate and drank and she sat with them, wondering whether Joe would ever write, and if he did, would he say he loved her?

  Why hadn’t he written? It was six months now. He couldn’t be dead because there had been no knock and no buff telegram. Perhaps, after all, he did not love her but then she remembered his arm about her as they flew the kite, his face as he had said over the gate, ‘Stay with me.’ His face as he had said the same words all those years ago in the storm on the moor. But why hasn’t he written, she asked herself again.

  Milk lay on the children’s upper lips and she wiped each mouth and one child, Naomi, put her arm up, drew her head down and kissed her. Hannah stroked her hair. It was soft, short and fine and there were no nits any more.

  She settled back on the carpet in front of the children, leaning her arm on a chair because her back ached these days and listened as they took it in turns to tell a story. It had been a successful idea because fear and anger and loneliness was put into words and Hannah wished that she could have a similar outlet. Amy told of a rabbit who lived in a hole but a big growling fox came and stamped on the warren and the plaster fell in and so the rabbit took the baby rabbits down into the cellar and they were all safe.