A Time for Courage (9 page)

She walked on the grass, her skirt held up with her hand and she felt a freedom that was quite new. The earth crumpled beneath her feet as she slipped down the bank and it moved between her toes. Her feet were grey with dirt. Joe spun round and laughed. ‘Good girl,’ he said and turned back as she slid her feet into the water.

It was cold, so cold, and her toes gripped the bottom. Stones slipped over and round her feet, carried onwards by the water. ‘Are you all right?’ Joe asked. And she knew he did not mean the water.

She looked across at the bank opposite as the water dragged at the earth and swept some away. ‘Yes, I’m quite all right, thank you.’ She stooped and let her hand fall in the water. She caught some and let it trickle through her fingers. She stooped again and cupped some. It was quite clear.

‘I’ll teach you to tickle some trout if you like,’ Joe offered, watching as she stood so quietly.

‘Do they like it then?’ she queried.

Joe laughed. ‘You do me good, Hannah Watson,’ he said. ‘No, it means we’ll catch some for our meal this evening. In our hands.’

Hannah thought of her father and brother. They would be fishing somewhere together, without her. With rods, with wine, with smiles on their faces; on their powerful faces. ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she replied firmly though still, at the back of her mind, there were those pictures that shocked.

They lay on the bank, leaning far out over the shallow pool. Hannah’s hand had been below the surface in the shadow of the rock for so long that it was almost numb. The trout was basking easily now, just above her fingers and she felt the pressure of Joe’s hand on her arm. She closed her hand around the fish slowly because she was so numb and thought she had lost it but then she felt the firmness of flesh and held on even as it thrashed. Her hat was off now because it cast a shadow and her hair had loosened and strands dangled in the water. Her face was sore from the sun, and red. She was glad.

‘Hang on now, Hannah,’ Joe called, his voice full with excitement. She did. She hung on and as the afternoon wore on there were four fish on the bank beside them and inside her head the pictures were fading as she made herself concentrate on the trout, the water, the cold. There were two fish from her and two from Joe; enough for supper. Would her father and Harry catch as many with their rods and tackle? She hoped not.

But by now the air was heavy and the bank of cloud they had first seen an hour ago had moved, borne along on a wind that flicked at her hair and sent the birds from the tree. The foals were sheltering beside their mothers and Joe quickly put the fish in the string bag.

‘Come on, Hannah. We shouldn’t have stayed so long.’

He took her hand and pulled her up. She held her hat in the other and they collected their boots. Hannah’s feet felt warm in her stockings but cramped in the shoes. They walked quickly, the wind pushing their clothes around them. The mares stood with their backs to the weather, their tails whipping close against their haunches.

Hannah held the flask, empty now, and pulled at her skirt with the other hand, edging round a flattened boulder.

‘How do women stand up against men then? How can we become people, not belongings, because that is what we are, what mother is, isn’t it?’ she shouted at him, the wind snatching at the words as she spoke. Had he heard?

She saw him shrug. ‘You need economic independence, my mother says. That’s partly why she runs the school. She and father are equal, you see.’

‘Yes, I see,’ said Hannah. She had stopped now and he turned and pulled her on. ‘I want to teach and to go to university. I just feel I must teach, you see.’ She was shouting hard against the wind.

‘Then you will, if you really want to.’ He turned and looked at the clouds which now had a plum-coloured base. Hannah had never seen that before and then the sky was split by a dagger of light, and thunder followed so loud that she held her head and screamed. It rolled on and on and Joe took her arm and dragged her but she dropped the flask as the rains came. Where was it? She couldn’t see. Her hair was in her eyes, the wind was driving the rain into her face and mouth.

‘Where’s the flask?’ she was screaming at Joe as he tried to pull her on. ‘No, I must get the flask.’ It had been in her keeping and she was taking it back with her; that was her job. And she struggled back until she was near the boulder again and felt with her hands around the base. Mud rose up round her shoes and all she could feel was cropped turf but then, just to the right she felt its hardness. Clutching it to her she struggled back, quicker now because the wind was behind her.

‘Yes,’ he shouted, ‘you’ll do what you want, Hannah. I’ve no fear of that, now stay with me; whatever you do, stay with me.’ His voice was firm and so was his hand.

‘Why are your hands so hard?’ she asked, but this time her words were tossed away by the wind.

The bath was waiting for them in the room off the kitchen. Mrs Arness left a towel and told Joe to go and drip in front of the fire until it was his turn. The water was hot and dirt floated from her feet and her legs; it had never done that before and Hannah smiled. The dressing-gown, which belonged to Mrs Arness, was too large so Hannah rolled up the sleeves and waited in the chair in front of the kitchen fire while the fish were gutted and cooked. Her skin still felt damp and her hair too and the smell of cooking fish was thick in the room.

Mr Arness came from the studio when he was called. He was large and wore a navy smock, marked with paint. He smelt of turpentine and linseed oil.

He smiled and they sat down when Joe was ready. She felt so hot. Dry and hot. Her head, her limbs, but the fish was good. They were eating fish that she had caught – she and Joe had caught. It felt good to have served a purpose. Her throat was sore. Ginger beer was on the table in a squat brown bottle. It was like the ginger beer that Uncle Simon had bought them.

‘It’s a shame that Uncle Simon died,’ she said. And her voice sounded a long way off. ‘But Father says it is a good thing to die like that.’

Mr Arness looked at her, a long look, and then at his wife. He had a nice face. It was lined but he only had a small moustache. It didn’t dip into his food.

‘People see things differently,’ Mr Arness said. He sounded almost English and they talked of the weather and the painting on which he was working; a view from the studio window. He had captured the clouds this evening, he told them. The kitchen was bright with the patchwork curtains drawn; the airer was free of washing now.

‘Miss Fletcher says that the Boers have a right to their independence. Father says they taxed foreign miners then wouldn’t let them vote. He said the Boers have always wanted to break from Britain. He says they need crushing. There are concentration camps, the newspapers say, that sound dreadful.’ She wondered how poor Uncle Simon had felt about dying. Had he thought it was a good thing? She doubted it somehow.

Mr Arness said carefully. ‘Yes, perhaps you should listen to Miss Fletcher.’

‘Yes, perhaps I should. She’s my teacher, you know.’ She was hotter still and her head was cracking like the lightning.

Mrs Arness spoke. ‘They have concentrated the Boer women and children together behind fences. Many have died. It seems hardly a good example for Britain to set.’

Hannah smiled eagerly. ‘Yes, that’s what Miss Fletcher says. But Father says we are a civilising influence on the world.’ Her voice dropped now. Her father was wrong, she thought; about that and other things. How strange. To think so clearly suddenly when so much recently had been confused. What was the matter with her? Her knife felt heavy. She knew now that she was unwell. She saw Mrs Arness rise, putting her hand out to stop Joe coming round the table to her. Her soft clothes floated.

‘Come with me, Hannah. You’ve taken a chill. It’s time we got you into bed.’

Her legs felt heavy, very heavy, but the fish had been nice. It was so good to have been useful. To have achieved something. She stopped at the door and turned.

‘What I don’t understand,’ she mumbled, ‘is that South Africa belongs to the black men, doesn’t it, so what are the Boers and the British doing fighting over it anyway? It isn’t either of ours, is it? I mean, where have the natives gone?’ Mrs Arness led her through but she heard Mr Arness say, ‘That is a very important question, Hannah. One I’m afraid we’d all forgotten to ask – except for you.’

The bed was soft and cool. The rain was still drumming outside. Mrs Arness blew on her hands and then tipped camphor into her cupped palm and rubbed it gently on Hannah’s chest. Her breath had not warmed her hand but its coolness soothed. Could Joe’s mother see if one breast was smaller than the other, she wondered, but was too tired to care. The camphor made her eyes sting. She closed them. It was nice to have Mrs Arness here, to have an arm around her shoulders, to have someone touching her. It was good, so good to be in a household where rules were not hard and unyielding, where warmth was everywhere.

Now she was pulling up the sheet and natives were dancing round her father’s white body. How many fish had he and Harry caught? She turned as Mrs Arness moved from the bed, the oil lamp in her hand lighting her face.

‘Why did Aunt Eliza send me here?’ she queried, but the words were too quiet for anyone to hear.

Sam met Hannah and Harry as they drove the trap into the mine yard which was pitted with deep ruts still water-logged from the rain.

‘Drive on further, Harry,’ he instructed, pointing to a curved track which ran up to the front of the brick-built office standing to the left of the workings. Behind the low building which ran into sheds and store-rooms were the chimneys which cast long shadows. Around them the moor seemed undisturbed by this man-made intrusion, and set against the pale blue sky and distant white clouds the seagulls wheeled and called while below them kites silently hovered over their prey.

Sam had never allowed Hannah down into the mine but now as he helped her from the trap she asked him again. He shook his head, his hand tipped far back and his ginger hair, clean and free from oil, fell down on to his forehead.

‘Your father would not approve,’ he repeated, ‘and besides, it’s bad luck for women to go down amongst the darkness. The men would object.’

So it would just be Harry and he was pleased because they were already one day late. Serve her right to stand there with a face down to her boots, he thought. Damn the girl. Caught some sort of chill, his father had said when the message had arrived during a late dinner after that appalling storm. ‘So you’ll have to delay your trip, though why you want to go and delve in that filthy mess I cannot imagine. Hardly a gentlemanly activity.’

Harry had not attempted to explain but merely finished his port and wondered whether Sam took exception to his father’s attitude. It was hard to tell as he sat across the table sipping his port from the crystal glass. Samuel Polgus was a man whose face showed little.

Now Harry stood with his hands in his pockets looking over the buildings, drinking in the smell of the place, seeing the gorse which grew out of thin earth wherever it could find a footing.

As Hannah kicked at the dried dirt of the track which dusted her skirt with grey, he looked at Sam giving orders to two men waiting outside the mine office. Sam was stocky in his brown suit and stood solidly on his feet. In fact everything looked solid about the man, as though he could block a punch from the boxing teacher at school with just a movement of his hand.

His marriage to Eliza had been a late one, Harry thought, and one that had not brought approval from his father, for Sam was the manager of the mine and that made him very little better than ‘trade’. A downward move for Eliza and utter nonsense in his father’s eyes since she had, to his certain knowledge, rejected far more suitable offers. It was a situation which would not be permissible in his family, he had said to his wife specifically for the ears of his son and daughter who were riding in the same carriage back to the wedding breakfast.

Harry remembered that when his mother had demurred and talked of love, his father had snorted that love had nothing to do with marriage. Marriage was the consolidation of property, and Harry thought then, and again now, that in that case Eliza had probably married well, since she no longer had to pay out a salary to Sam. It would be all in the family from now on. He looked around with satisfaction at the site. They were here at last and the rain had cleared, though the ride over had been slow because there was so much mud on the lanes.

Harry moved closer to Sam who was watching the men as they moved a trolley nearer to the shaft. The chimneys towered above them, all their shadows jagged as they fell over the square buildings. He turned to Hannah who was stroking the nose of the bay mare that was still in harness, letting it nuzzle her hand. ‘Have you noticed that the chimney nearest to us has had a good few feet built on since we were last here?’

He watched as she stepped back and shaded her eyes, then shook her head saying, ‘Well seen, Harry. Why was that, Sam?’ Her face was puzzled. ‘It looks so enormous.’

Harry was irritated that she had not asked him but Sam smiled. His face was broad and his voice slow like that of most Cornishmen.

‘We need a good up-draught to produce enough head of steam to drive the engine and, believe it or not, that extra height has made a good bit of difference, Hannah.’ He was looking at her as he spoke, expecting her to understand, and she was pleased. Harry’s nose was in the air and she knew he was annoyed that Sam was talking directly to her. Harry’s mouth began to open so she continued in a rush.

‘I know that one of the engines raises the skips but what about the others?’ She watched Harry flush and it made her feel a little better about not going down the shaft. She saw that Sam had noticed too, but he just smiled and touched her arm lightly, drawing her to one side of a gorse bush which was sporting yellow flowers.

‘The middle one works the pumps and that is invaluable since we’re so near the sea and water is always a problem. The furthest is the stamp’s engine-house.’ He paused and looked around, his face clouding. ‘It’s a shame to see things so much quieter now. We’re down to half the work-force we had just fifteen years ago. Cornwall provided a good part of the world’s tin in the middle of Victoria’s century, you know, but each year, Hannah, things get worse. Australia and Malaysia are the culprits, coming up steadily and taking over our markets, especially those in the East. Things are slow now and getting slower; your father’s profits will show him that.’