3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  Rhia did not want a lecture, or another tirade against her father. ‘Tell me the rest of the story of Rhiannon and Manannán,’ she said.

  Epona stood as still as a statue and accepted an apple graciously while Rhia saddled her in the stable-yard in the half-light. Her soft grey ears were twitching as though the mare could hear the altered rhythm of Rhia’s heartbeat; as though she knew something was different.

  Only the baker’s lamp was lit as they rode through the village and down to the sea. Thomas would be awake, though, and at his loom. The shale was glistening, the tide receding. The moon was new; a dim crescent, barely visible in the pearl grey sky. The sea sighed rhythmically. Rhia pressed her heels gently into Epona’s flank and the mare tossed her head and picked up her hooves. Rhia leaned lower over her neck and they moved as one until Epona was at a canter, her hooves rattling the shale like castanets. Rhia’s hood fell back. The air was sharp and salty and its damp clung to her hair. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  The night sea journey.

  The journey to the farthest shores of one’s fears. It was the sea itself that Rhia feared most.

  The Kelly cottage was on the outskirts of the village, in the next cove, with the sand instead of shale at the back gate. Michael Kelly had once said he needed to see the ocean to remember that there was a world around its shores: doubtful he would need to be reminded of the fact again.

  As children, Rhia and Thomas would sit on stools by Michael’s loom and watch him. He taught them how to weave and told them that flax was one of the oldest fibres in the world. He showed them how the soft, flexible stem of the plant needed to be soaked to separate the fibres, allowing for a much finer yarn to be spun. Flax was a peculiar fibre, and much harder to spin than wool and cotton. Spinning it by hand produced a superior cloth because a spindle and hands as deft as Annie Kelly’s could produce yarn of any weight, whereas machines could only produce coarse yarns. Annie Kelly spun all grades of linen yarn; finer for lace and cambric and damask, and coarse yarn for rope and paper and canvas.

  Rhia arrived at the back of the cottage and tied Epona to the gatepost. The building was the shape of a barn and larger than most of the weavers’ cottages in Greystones. Thomas saw her through the window and beckoned her to come in. He was at the loom. The Kellys worked long hours. They produced such perfect repeat patterns that their cloth was always in demand.

  The back door was never latched. The long narrow room that looked out across the Irish Sea was sparsely furnished to make way for two ancient looms, one for linen and one for wool, each hewn from gnarled oak and dark with age. There was a large hearth in the middle of the room and from a hook above the spitting flames hung a blackened pot. A bright copper kettle shone like a lantern on its stone ledge. The scene was so familiar that Rhia wanted to cry at the thought of leaving. Neither Thomas nor Annie stopped working when Rhia let herself in. She did not expect them to. The rhythms of the loom and the spinning wheel were not to be interrupted without good cause.

  ‘Morning.’ Annie smiled. She smiled no matter how much she missed her man or how much yarn was left to spin. ‘There’s broth in the pot, and you know where the bread is.’

  Thomas said nothing as Rhia fetched herself a bowl of broth and a hunk of warm soda bread from the cheese cupboard. She sat on a stool by the fire next to Annie’s spinning wheel and watched Thomas’s foot treadle up and down and his hands fly across the shafts as though they were an extension of his body. He had his mother’s colouring – wavy chestnut hair and milk-white skin. His hands and forearms were strong and sinewed. He was always quiet, but his silences had moods. Rhia could tell he was brooding.

  Annie looked from one of them to the other, wound her bobbin off and dropped it into the basket at her feet. She touched Rhia’s shoulder. ‘I’ve linen to boil. Don’t go away for ever, will you? You’ll be missed.’ Annie kissed her on each cheek and gave her a swift hug and then hurried away.

  Rhia swallowed back her tears and moved closer to the window near the loom. She waited for Thomas to speak. He finally took his foot from the treadle.

  ‘Well, Rhia.’

  ‘Well yourself.’

  ‘Will you come back to us do you think?’

  ‘What a thing to say! Do you really think I’d leave for ever? I don’t want to go. I’ve no choice.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘My pa had no choice. You’ve been wishing yourself in London since you were wee.’

  It was true. ‘But this is not how I wanted it, not to seek a position.’

  ‘Aye, and I’m sorry for your troubles, but you’ve no idea how you’ve been blessed. You’ve not had to think about how to pay for your kid slippers and your silk ribbons. It won’t be so bad, you’ve a quick mind – you’re inventive.’

  ‘But I’m not polite. All of the Londoners I’ve met are polite. And I’m not clever enough to be a governess.’

  Thomas only shook his head as though this didn’t warrant a reply. He looked away from her towards the waves breaking across the beach. Epona was pawing the sand at the gate. ‘She’ll miss you,’ he said, jerking his head at the mare.

  ‘You’ll be careful, won’t you Thomas?’

  He didn’t answer. He led a small group of Catholics who met secretly to plan insurgencies, just as his father had done. He and his men wrought their own brand of justice on the English Protestant landlords who behaved unjustly towards their tenants. Their actions were often violent and always unlawful, and Rhia didn’t ever ask about them. She heard things, of course, and that was bad enough. Lately, she’d also heard that Thomas had a sweetheart; the sister of one of his men.

  ‘I hear you’re courting Fiona Duffy.’

  He ignored this. ‘What of your painting? Have you more ideas?’

  Rhia smiled. ‘Only a hundred. But I’ve not picked up my brush for weeks.’

  They had climbed trees and bathed naked and searched for fairy rings. Thomas had watched her first experiments with pigments, sitting on the forest floor in the autumn or amongst the long headland grasses in the summer. He had admired the silken skin of a wet shell with her, and the scribble of veins in a dry leaf. He’d made the easel and paintbox for her sixteenth birthday. That was when he’d asked Rhia to marry him. Connor Mahoney did not allow him in the cottage for the rest of the summer.

  They were silent until the fire spat loudly, making Rhia jump and interrupting the awkwardness of the moment. Thomas went to the cheese cupboard and returned with a package wrapped in brown paper. He gave it to her. ‘Don’t open it now. Not till you’re on your way. I’ll not say goodbye, as you’ve said you’re coming home. You know the hearth’s always lit here.’

  ‘I know.’ She took Thomas’s hands until he pulled away and returned to his loom. He didn’t look up again. He kept his head bent low – lower than normal – over the shafts.

  Epona walked up the headland as though she was hitched to a cart, and seemed to slow even more as they neared the cottage. Perhaps she had sensed that something was amiss. Rhia turned to take a last look at the beach; at the gulls circling above the red and yellow and blue fishing boats. She turned back and saw her father. He was sitting in his wicker chair looking out across the bay as he’d done every day for a week, unheeding of the weather. The weight of his failure was patent in the stoop of his shoulders.

  They had pretended, thus far, that the quarrel had never happened. It was easier. She’d had little time to dwell on it once the decision had been taken to leave Dublin, and Connor had not returned to St Stephen’s Green to witness the empty echoing rooms and the tears of Tilly and Hannah. He had been released from the infirmary only last week. Rhia and Brigit had done everything themselves. There was enough from the auction of the Dublin house and contents to settle accounts, but not much more.

  Rhia could delay the moment no longer. She jumped down and kissed Epona on the nose. She gave her a withered apple from her pocket and a light tap on the rump. The mare knew how to find her own way to the yard, but she
went reluctantly, her head hung like Thomas’s had been. Rhia turned away quickly.

  Her father looked up at her with his head tilted and attempted a smile. ‘I wish you wouldn’t go, Rhia.’

  ‘It’s not for ever.’

  ‘To think of you seeking a position. And with no husband to provide for you. It’s shameful.’

  Rhia resisted the temptation to argue. ‘It is fashionable,’ she said as if she were only off to the opera. ‘Women of every class work in London. I’ve read about it.’

  He shook his head. ‘Who will marry you now?’ It was as if she had not spoken. He would never understand because he did not want to. The restraints of class and the roles of men and women were traditional and non-negotiable; like weaving. Linen should be hand-woven and that was that. It was dangerous ground. Rhia kept her tone light, with effort. ‘The coach will soon be here. Will you come up to the house?’

  ‘No, the place smells of your grandmother today. It is depressing me.’ Rhia was too surprised to respond. He looked so mournful, so sorry for himself that she almost smiled. For the first time she saw his obstinacy as a weakness rather than a strength. He was not prepared to yield even a little to see the world as something other than that which he ordained.

  ‘Then I’ll say goodbye.’ She leaned over and kissed his forehead. He took her hand and held it so tightly, so that she wondered if he would let her go. When he finally did, he looked away, back to the sea, so that neither could see the other’s emotion. He was really letting her go, perhaps only because he had not the strength to prevent it. Rhia felt a mix of sorrow and elation. Was she really going to be in charge of her own life?

  She turned away and started to walk back up towards the cottage.

  ‘Rhia!’ he called out weakly. She turned.

  ‘You are brave and kind for a devil in petticoats.’ His eyes almost twinkled, just for a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry about William.’

  ‘He wasn’t good enough for you.’

  Rhia rushed back and threw her arms around her father and then ran up the hill.

  Her trunk was already beside the front door. She and her mother had lugged it down the stairs on their own. They were both much stronger since the move from Dublin. Brigit was at one of the three spinning wheels by the hearth. Now that Rhia was leaving, two of the village women would come in to spin. Her mother looked up. ‘There’s a new loaf.’

  Rhia thought Mamo might still be in the house, but she didn’t seem to be. She was probably with her sheep. ‘I’ve eaten at the Kelly’s,’ she said.

  Brigit nodded. ‘We should have a jug, then.’

  It was what they did in the evenings when there was a spinning circle, but this was a special day. Rhia got the stoneware jug from the larder and filled it with porter from the tap in the barrel, then put it on to the ledge by the hearth to warm.

  Mamo’s downstairs parlour was much cosier than any of the rooms at St Stephen’s Green. The furnishings were simpler and the fabrics older and softer. There were books on tables and faded rugs on the wooden floor and Rhia’s easel in the corner. The room smelt of the lanolin and lavender Mamo had used to put in her hair to make it soft.

  Rhia went upstairs to change into her travelling clothes and took a last look around her childhood room. It was neat, which was unusual in itself, and it felt empty without her paintbox on the table and her books by the bed. There were no clothes strewn across the old blanket box. She could see the sea from the window, but she turned away before she could think too hard about it.

  When she came downstairs, Mamo was at her old spinning wheel, but if Brigit noticed the wheel turning she said nothing. They sat together quietly. Brigit passed Rhia the jug and sighed. ‘I didn’t realise how I’ve missed the oily feel of wool through my fingers.’

  Rhia, too, liked the feel of wool. ‘Will you try out some new weaves?’

  Mamo chuckled. ‘You can treat worsted to make it pretty as silk,’ she said. ‘And it costs much less. Tell your mother that.’ Rhia shot her a look.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Thomas,’ said Brigit. ‘I’ll have him weave some samples.’

  They talked until the coach wheels were to be heard coming up the hill, and then until there was no ignoring the jingle of the reins and the snorting and stomping of the horses outside.

  There were no tears, they had each shed them privately. Their emotion was present only in its constraint; in the tautness of speech and the gripping of hands.

  ‘Don’t forget to write,’ whispered Mamo in her ear. ‘Remember, there is always something to feel grateful for. Always. Be in the world but not of it, Rhiannon.’

  This made no sense to Rhia. How could one be in the world but not of it?

  Brigit pressed a purse into Rhia’s hand and put a finger to her lips before she could protest.

  She stepped up into the coach. In a moment it was rumbling down the drive towards the Dublin road.

  30 November 1840

  Mamo stór,

  The Irish Mail has arrived in Holyhead without sinking. I was so bilious until this morning that I didn’t once consider the fate of the Spanish Armada. Manannán’s kingdom is in ceaseless motion and I cannot imagine how sailors ever manage to walk upright.

  There is little to see of England on a November evening but fog and a barrow-seller or two, but there is thankfully a tavern on the quay, from where I write this. It feels a little bold, venturing into a tavern on my own, but as I have crossed the sea, what is there to fear in a port tavern? So far no one has either approached or reproached me.

  The window is grimy with sea mist and soot, but I can just see a row of black hansoms beneath a gas lantern, waiting to drive passengers to the overnight rail service to Euston. It departs at midnight and it is barely ten o’clock. I am told the railway is nearby and, since I don’t want to encounter certain passengers from the crossing, I am taking comfort in a glass of porter and a slice of cold, rather greasy, pigeon pie.

  At lunch today (besides the pie, the only meal I’ve eaten since I left) I shared a table with a party of London ladies who had been in Dublin for a Protestant wedding. I was seated beside Mrs Spufford, who informed me that travelling unchaperoned is a terrible thing for the reputation of a young woman, and that I must endeavour to learn certain proprieties if I expect to be welcomed into polite society. If she is an envoy of the la-di-da league (that’s what Thomas calls them) then English society isn’t so polite after all.

  Manannán took revenge on my behalf. Mrs Spufford dipped her spoon into her minted pea soup just as the boat tilted, causing both ladies and bowls to slide sideways. The contents of the spoon landed in her décolletage and I laughed before I could help it. No one else did. Mrs Spufford looked at me as though I were something sticking to the sole of her slipper. Presumably, a well-bred young Englishwomen would have found no humour in a pea green décolletage. Mrs Spufford and I did not speak again and the other London ladies took the opportunity to practise their repartee, which still stings my vanity.

  ‘You are from the trade, Miss Mahoney? Why, my upstairs maid comes from a linen family.’

  ‘Ireland really is becoming civilised, I had no idea I would be able to buy silk stockings in Dublin!’

  They droned on with their pretty spite, and I let them. I simply could not be bothered wasting my wits on the creatures, besides I’m weak and weary from being rolled around like a brewer’s tun. I thought they’d forgotten me by the time the custard pudding was served, but their best insult was yet to come.

  ‘How fortunate you are, Miss Mahoney, that your complexion is so dark. It is tiresome being fashionable at times; always taking care to protect one’s delicate pigmentation.’

  I entertained myself by imagining their coils of lacquered hair as the stubs of Lucifer’s horns. I am beginning to wonder if being Irish and therefore Catholic might be a disadvantage in London. Of course, you know I’m no Catholic, but that is our secret. I was curious to know what English ladies liked to talk about. Now
I know: breeding, and the allowances of people one aspires to know; idle people who pass their time redecorating their homes and themselves. I cannot imagine the conventions and niceties I am ignorant of. I hope Antonia Quaker is no minion of polite society.

  I can see the contents of the hold of the Mail being transferred to wagons; but there seem to be more sacks of grain than of mail. It looks as if I have just crossed the Irish Sea with all of the wheat, oats and barley of the nation. It is not just Irish linen that is channelled through London. Perhaps I should be grateful that British law has not actually forbidden women to read the papers. I wonder whether it is because if she read of the ruthlessness of his trade, a woman might turn against her industrialist husband.

  I suppose I should curb my blessed interestedness and get into one of those ominous-looking black carriages. By morning I shall be in London.

  Weave

  The sleeping compartment was the size of the water chamber at St Stephen’s Green. It was close to midnight and Rhia couldn’t be bothered with fastenings and button hooks. She doubted that she would sleep.

  The carriages clattered and hissed all night, halting at one lantern-lit station after another. Crates and trunks and bulging brown canvas sacks stamped with the insignia of little Queen Victoria were loaded on, before the train lurched off again. The rhythmic activity and increasing nervousness kept Rhia awake. It seemed that in no time at all grey mist hung over fields soft and eerie in the dawn. The silhouettes of stone walls and sinewed trees reminded her of home. This, surely, was a good sign.

  She must have dozed, because the light was suddenly strong and stark and the scene from the window unsettling. The soft landscapes of daybreak could have been a dream. Forests and fields had been replaced by slag heaps and flatlands, interspersed occasionally with a dairy farm or a mill. Then the straggling hovels of the city’s fringe-dwellers appeared; wattle and daub with a bleak yard that ran up against the railway. Sometimes a scraggly hen or two; a skinny goat; a mongrel pig. Could this be London?