A Time for Courage (15 page)

She did not hear Hannah leave the room; she was too busy wishing that she had, long ago, kept some of her own money so that she could have sent her daughter to university. But would she ever really have had the courage to go against her husband? Edith Watson cried as she realised the answer.

The gas fire was popping in Hannah’s room casting deep shadows into the corners, blanking out the pictures of rural life into blind squares. She did not light the lamp but sat in the chair. Harry had tried to speak to her, taking her arm, gripping it tightly, but she had brushed him aside, not looking at his face. He could say nothing that she wanted to hear. She had brought it on herself, this she knew, but that he should go in her place made her flinch from him.

And no, she had replied to his tense question, she wouldn’t break her promise and tell of the accident, but her voice had sounded cracked and dry, as dry as their voices when they came up from the mine that day.

She wouldn’t cry, not where they could see but there was no one here now, was there? Just the memory of the anger which had consumed her, driven her to challenge that man and for that she could not be sorry, but none the less, the pain was deep and strong as the tears fell. Her shoulders heaved and her chest too. And when all the tears were done the misery was still there. But so was something else. This would not be the end. She would not allow this to be the end. She stood and walked to the window.

She would ask Miss Fletcher to help her to become a teacher without going to university. She would ask for help in learning about her body so that she could not be like her mother, for she, Miss Hannah Watson, had decided on her future. And she would ask Miss Fletcher to tell her how she could become a person, not just a piece of property, and all the while her father would not know what she was doing.

Tonight all confusion was finally gone and hate had entered her life.

The brass knob of the heavy school door gleamed. Hannah could see the dent which lay just to the right of its centre. Miss Fletcher’s maid had still not managed to rub the dirt from its depth. Hannah held out her gloved forefinger, the navy sharp against the yellow as she ran it over the cold surface, feeling the dip, seeing it, but hearing only her father’s voice as he had spoken one week ago, harsh and grating and full of hate. She curled her hand around the brass knob, tighter and tighter, surprised that it did not fold beneath her fury. Miss Fletcher’s study was at the end of a long, dark, wood-panelled corridor which sucked at any light. Hannah knew that she would be there. She always was half an hour before school was due to start and had probably been there far earlier on the first day of Spring Term. Her feet echoed on the black and white tiles of the entrance porch. She had not stopped for barley sugar from the Emporium this morning, there was no time for that any more. Childhood had gone, completely gone, and now something had to be put in its place.

She pushed open the swing-door into the assembly hall. Soon it would be filled with rows of girls, navy and white, hair pinned and hymn books open. Miss Fletcher would take her place on the stage to lead the prayers, and behind would range the five members of her staff. Would Mrs Kent be there, dark and swarthy with hair hanging lank either side of her face, torn as ever between her native French and her adopted English? Would she cry as she always did when
Eternal Father
was sung and her husband was alive again for a brief moment?

Hannah stood looking around the hall. It smelt the same, the whole school smelt the same but there was no sound and she had never known it like this before. No opening and shutting of doors, no music wafting from the music room, muted until an opening door snatched out the sound. No sound of feet walking, never running. No murmur from the classrooms which bordered the hall, their tall internal windows unable to open, placed high so that light could enter but sight could not leave.

She smiled and walked across the wood-blocked floor. She and Esther had been appointed window monitors for their class a few years ago and when the fire practice bell was rung they had been talking behind their hands in the back row of their classroom. They had rushed to close the windows, hauling at the thin ropes, as the others had filed out into the playground. At last, in long rows, they had stood facing Miss Fletcher. Behind her all windows were closed except for theirs. They had been so deep in their own private world that they had opened them as wide as was humanly possible, Miss Fletcher had said as they had reported to her during lunch break.

They had been relieved of their window duties publicly, and now Hannah’s smile was rueful. Her hand ached from the hundred lines they had also had to do but it was the humiliation that had taught her more. It had never happened again. Now she pulled at her gloves, brushing at her skirt though there was nothing to mar its crisp navy. She took a deep breath and pushed open the door into the corridor. Why was it so dark? Miss Fletcher wasn’t dark, wasn’t forbidding, even when punishments were given.

She passed the side door which only parents could use and some light came in then, multicoloured through the green and blue stained glass. But the door was set into its own small lobby and the dim light did not reach beyond this.

At the end of the corridor outside Miss Fletcher’s room there was a bench along the right-hand wall and above it was a photograph of Queen Victoria. She’ll have to get that down soon, thought Hannah, and put Edward up there after the Coronation in June. Just imagine, a man in a girls’ school. What will the parents say? She straightened her shoulders. But her father had said enough already, and now she knocked, hard and fast, and almost immediately she heard Miss Fletcher’s voice, surprised but calm as it always was.

‘Enter.’ And she did, feeling the hardness which had so rapidly filled her giving way even as she opened the door.

Miss Fletcher sat behind the desk in grey, as always, her bored face inclined towards the door, tilted in query until she saw Hannah, and then she smiled and Hannah was warmed.

‘Hannah, this is a surprise, but a pleasant one.’ Miss Fletcher waved towards the hard wooden chair which was placed almost opposite her. ‘I hope that you’ve come to me with good news and that we can be considering the Classical Tripos for you, but first, of course, there is the Cambridge Junior Examination.’

Hannah smoothed her skirt then interlocked her fingers and drove them hard down, pushing back the material of her gloves. Her throat hurt and she looked up, not at Miss Fletcher but through the window which was above the dark mahogany filing cabinets to the left of where they sat. Papers lay on top of the cabinets and exercise books were heaped on the floor beneath the sill, spilling against the bottom of the green curtains. Bottles of ink stood on the varnished shelf which hung between the corner and the window. Some had splashed against the pale green flock wallpaper and the blue had changed to black.

Outside, the shrubbery looked bleak and grey in its January setting and the fog, the ever-present London fog, was looming and blanking out the neighbouring streets and buildings; but not the street noises, which it magnified – the rattle of the carriages, the sound of horses and traders’ cries. Still, there was too much of a tightness to speak, too much uncertainty of poise to attempt an answer.

She looked down at her hands again, then up but not at Miss Fletcher, not yet, she was not yet ready to tell her. On up to something, anything, which she could hang on to and gain composure and there it was. The painting above Miss Fletcher. Vivid and thick with paint. Sun on geraniums, warm and vigorous as the marigolds had been. Stay with me, Joe had said in the rain that drenched and froze, and she felt again his hand, his hard strong hand and somehow his strength was for a moment hers.

‘No,’ she answered and her voice was not high or broken but, perhaps, rather loud. ‘No, I am not allowed to go to university.’ She saw the frown begin on Miss Fletcher’s forehead, the darkening of her hazel eyes and the hand which darted to the pearl buttons on her high-necked dress.

‘But why, my dear?’ This time Miss Fletcher’s voice was not calm but sharp and urgent. ‘I must speak to your father. I will write to him today and ask if he will come and see me, or I could visit him.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘No, please don’t. There is no hope of ever changing his mind.’ She looked from Miss Fletcher to her hands, pulling her gloves off now, finger by finger, laying them neatly one on top of the other, flattening her body shape from them. She would not think of him, his dark violence, his rigid form. She would not think of her mother’s sickness and swelling belly, full of him. She would not think of Harry as he took her place.

‘I want to teach, I want to learn how to look after myself and my mother and how not to have babies. I want to learn how to become a person, not a piece of property.’

And now she looked straight at Miss Fletcher, into her calm face framed by chestnut hair. ‘Therefore I need you to employ me as your pupil teacher and I need to join the St John’s organisation; I know you sometimes help them to raise funds and therefore you will have the name of someone I can go and see.’ It sounded rude, abrupt, but that was not how she felt inside. Would Miss Fletcher realise that? Hannah sat back and said nothing more.

For many minutes there was silence. There was not even the ticking of a clock because Miss Fletcher had said long ago that she could do without every extremity of her body longing to twitch in time to its regular rhythm. The clock was now in the dining-hall and could not be heard above the rattle of knives and forks. Eventually Miss Fletcher picked up a pencil, first rolling it between her hands before using it to write what appeared to Hannah to be a list. All the time there was a frown between her eyes and now, as she finished, she looked briefly at the hunter watch that she kept on her desk to one side of the large blotter pad, and then up at Hannah.

‘Would you care to tell me what has happened, Hannah?’

She straightened her pad of paper then nodded as Hannah said, ‘No, if you don’t mind, Miss Fletcher, I would prefer not to, at the moment anyway.’

Miss Fletcher nodded. ‘Very well, my dear.’ She smiled and briskly tapped the desk. ‘Now, time is getting short. The girls will already be arriving. With regard to your requests, I have a few ideas I need to consider, to investigate, before I can give you an answer but,’ and here she put up her hand as Hannah started to protest, her impatience for an answer insupportable, her fear that it would be negative drying her mouth, ‘I can understand that it is probably advisable that you are not late home if, as I suspect, there has been a difficulty.’ She smiled as Hannah flushed. ‘My dear, I am thirty-three years of age and was not born yesterday. Now, perhaps you would join me here again at luncheon. I shall arrange to have a meal brought to us for we have a great deal to discuss.’ She paused. ‘It might be as well not to mention that fact to others, even that blonde shadow of yours.’

She smiled, and so did Hannah, who felt suddenly that it would be all right, that there was someone wiser alongside her. That her requests would be granted.

Miss Fletcher looked again at her watch, then clicked it shut. ‘Off you go then, Hannah. I have to remind Miss Dobson that it is definitely not a good idea to start the rather dreary Spring Term with
Eternal Father.
It is somewhat more than one can bear, don’t you think? Especially after the machinations of Christmas.’

Hannah rose, drawing on her gloves again. ‘“Thank you” doesn’t seem adequate somehow, Miss Fletcher,’ she said, hesitating.

‘Just wait until you see what I have in mind – you might not feel like thanking me. Teaching is not quite as idyllic as you perhaps think it is.’ Miss Fletcher laughed and waved to the door.

As Hannah reached it she paused and looked back. ‘Esther will be applying for university so you will have someone to groom,’ she volunteered, for Esther had written to tell her this. It was Uncle Thomas’s punishment.

Miss Fletcher laughed gently. ‘Not quite what I had in mind for that young lady,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you are both being punished?’ And she returned to the papers on her desk as Hannah closed the door, wondering if there was anything that escaped Miss Fletcher.

Esther was waiting for her in the cloakroom, by the pegs near the big square stone sinks with their gaping plug-holes. She was smart in the regulation high-collared white shirt and the navy serge skirt and thick cardigan.

‘For heaven’s sake, Hannah, darling. Where have you been and where are my sweets?’

She was pinning her hair up in the mirror which she always carried. It was propped up on the white-tiled window-ledge, which was not ideal because the light was too vivid in her eyes.

‘Sorry, not today. I had to see Miss Fletcher about something,’ Hannah said and reached for the mirror, holding it at a better angle for Esther.

‘How are you?’ she asked, looking closely at Esther. ‘Is your father still angry?’ They had not seen one another since New Year’s Eve and she had missed her cousin.

Esther pouted taking the last pin from her mouth and sliding it into the roll of hair at the nape of her neck. She patted it and turned slightly sideways. ‘How’s that?’

Hannah grinned. ‘Passable, I suppose.’ She wouldn’t think of Esther at university.

Esther pulled a face, putting the mirror back into the large leather bag that they all carried for their books. She linked her arm through Hannah’s and they strolled back into their classroom, Esther sitting in the desk nearest to the fire and Hannah taking the one behind her to avoid the direct gaze of the teacher. The room was full now with girls talking and laughing, the blackboard was quite black, devoid of any trace of chalk. The windows were closed against the weather, and the wood-panelled walls gleamed from holiday polishing. There was a smell of wax. Girls greeted Hannah as they passed and she smiled but was trying all the time to hear Esther.

‘Of course he’s not too cross,’ she heard. ‘He’s so busy sorting out that lovely brother of yours who’s grown so much, so well.’ She lifted her eyebrows and moved her shoulders and Hannah could have slapped her.