‘I must clean this lamp,’ she said but her voice was dead.
‘Hannah, you must read this.’ Her aunt was shaking now and came round the table and took Hannah’s hand.
‘I won’t read it. If I don’t read it it can’t be true.’ She took the rag which lay on the table and wiped round the bowl again and again because it must be quite clean, quite dry. Naomi would like that. She would not listen to the rustle of the paper as Eliza lifted the flap. She would not listen to the words which said in Eliza’s voice. ‘Regret to inform you that Major Joe Arness is missing, believed killed.’
No, she would not listen. She had too much to do.
‘Hannah, please stop. Please sit down.’ Her aunt was crying now but she, Mrs Joe Arness, would not, because she had not heard, would not listen.
She poured fresh oil into the bowl and put a clean white wick into the burner.
‘It should fit exactly,’ she told her aunt. ‘But must be able to move up and down easily and yet not loosely.’
She would not listen to the soft crying but to the hiss of the fire, the sound of her voice, ‘It must be soft and not too tightly plaited.’
Her fingers were shaking. How absurd. She could not ease the wick through the burner. She must not talk while she tried again. Her neck was hurting, she must get close, so that she could see the gap, not the yellow telegram.
She shrugged off her aunt’s hand. ‘Don’t you realise I must concentrate,’ she said. ‘Of course there are candles if this lamp doesn’t work.’ The shelves were full of them, wax built up on twisted wicks, the smell would be the same as that which had oozed across the table at Arthur’s party. But he was gone now, wasn’t he? There would be no more candles for Arthur, for Harry, but the wick was through now.
‘To put out the lamp it should not be turned down so far that the charred wick can fall into the bowl of the lamp. You must tell Naomi to blow out the flame, turn down the wick very low and leave the glowing end to go out of its own accord.’
Hannah stood now and turned to her aunt. ‘Tell Naomi please, Eliza. I have to go and check the apples.’
She walked past her aunt and now she took the telegram and Eliza put her hand on her arm but she walked on alone, out across the courtyard and up the stable-loft steps.
Moss had dried dull green on the wood and it was cracked and needed staining, but it was smooth and warm and the air inside the loft was full of motes caught in shafts of light and apple scent. The apples were fresh and full and firm and juice would fill her mouth, she knew that.
She picked one up, so red and green and held it to her cheek, remembering the feel of Simon’s hand, the touch of Harry’s as she had kissed it, the pale thin blue veins of her mother’s, the red glint on Arthur’s hair, and Joe, the gentle hardness of Joe who was her life.
And now she read the words, so black on the paper, and heard his screams. How could they have faded? And the tears came, not silent but loud, and howls too. The floor was hard as she dropped to it and beat her hands, harder and harder and harder until the splinters dug into her skin and she bled, red on white.
The baby was born that night, a girl, Edith, with red-gold hair and dark eyes and six weeks later the war ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month and Sam went up to London and traced the remains of Joe’s squadron but they could tell him nothing.
In December Hannah received a letter from a customer of Joe’s commissioning another table. She put it with the other two which had arrived for him to read when he came home.
She told Frances, who had come down to stay, that he would come back. He had said ‘Stay with me’, and so she would. He would not leave her, would he? Would he? Would he? And she cried again and held the baby close and Frances made her cocoa and they sat by the fire and sewed puppets and lavender bags and talked of the school they would begin but it was all so empty now. During the day her thoughts were never still, at night her sleep was never sound.
Winter passed and the tears still came and there was no peace for her anywhere, though Eliza and Frances said that somehow she must find some. Edith grew well and plump and Matthew carved a rattle which Naomi, Annie and Kate rubbed down and painted. They were brown from the mild winter, the bright spring, when Hannah walked them on the moor again in May, wrapping the cloak around herself, feeling tired as they turned and waved to Frances who held Edith, white-shawled in her arms.
She did not bring the kite. There was not enough wind, she told the children, watching as it flicked the hair about their faces. The primroses were soft yellow again in the green fields which led to the moor and the violets vivid blue, the heather purple and white. The calves were out grazing and the children walked cautiously through the herd.
Hannah listened to their talk, their laughter, for they could laugh again now and that was good. She drew the cloak tighter. She wanted to reach out and hold their hands but they were running on, their heads lifted to the pale blue sky.
They ate sandwiches down by the stream and Hannah lifted her skirt and walked on the rounded pebbles, feeling the water cold and strong, tugging at her feet, rolling the stones across her toes. She felt it but not inside. Nothing touched her inside any more. She sat on the bank, and picked at the grass, holding a stem between her thumbs and blowing, the piercing whistle startling the children, making them laugh. When the sun had passed above them Hannah rose, eager to be walking, unable to stay in any one place for long because he was not here, her love, her love.
‘Let’s go home now.’
She did not turn as the children groaned but walked back the way she had come, knowing that they would follow and they did, picking primroses for Frances and Eliza and violets, which they gave to her, and she wished they had not, for it was violets she had given to Joe.
Hannah looked at the house as they walked down the sloping field; its grey stone, the Virginia creeper, the windows filled with flowers, the driveway which swept up and round the house, the white stones which lined it. The white clouds moved across the sky behind it, changing shape from swans to ships to billowing sheets on a washing-line but the house never changed and she was grateful for its certainty.
Frances was at the gate. Her hands were white where she gripped the bar, she pulled the children to her, her eyes red.
‘Joe’s home, Hannah. He’s come home,’ Frances said. ‘Sam’s just picked him up in the jingle.’
Hannah looked at the house, at the garden, at Frances. ‘Where, where?’ she cried, starting to run up the drive.
‘The stable, my dear, but…’
Hannah did not wait to hear but ran up the rutted drive, her ankles turning; she did not notice or care and there was no breath left to spare to call his name and so she ran across the stable yard past the thyme to the open door.
He was there, dressed in an old tweed suit, rubbing the pony down, round and round with straw which fell from the hook where his left hand had been. She watched as he stooped and picked up the straw again with his right hand and pushed it between the two curved metal prongs and rubbed at the pony’s damp flanks again but still it fell and now she watched as he leant his head on his arm and cried.
She held on to the door, feeling the solid wood beneath her hand, seeing the pony that shifted from foot to foot; the bale of straw, the oats in the sack and knew she must not cry, not yet, not now. She gripped the door again and drew a breath.
‘Do it again, Joe,’ she said, because she must do for him what he had done for her so long ago.
He turned and she moved towards him, holding him as he wept, smelling the violets which were crushed between them, feeling the gentle hardness of his hand on her face, hearing his voice speaking of his love, his fear, his despair. The flames, the prison, and now the search for peace.
‘Do it again, my love,’ she said at last, breaking free of him and placing straw in the cold metal, forcing herself not to help as he wound it round the hook and rubbed at the damp flank until some of his memories were wiped
away and Hannah watched, knowing that life could go on now, for them at least.
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Copyright © Margaret Graham 1989
Margaret Graham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is a work of fiction. Apart from references to actual figures and places, all other names and characters are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First published in Great Britain in 1989 by
William Heinemann Ltd as A Measure of Peace
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ISBN 9780099585831
A Time for Courage Page 45
