A Time for Courage (7 page)

He had met the cart last night, down at the gate about a hundred yards from the cottage and had leapt up into it once he had latched the gate behind him and shaken her hand while he talked and laughed with Eliza. His hand had been hard and rough and in the fading light he had looked brown and strong. Eliza had told her that he was seventeen.

He held the door wide now, sweeping his hand in a mock bow. ‘It’s damp and gloomy in here, don’t you think?’

She paused, not knowing whether to nod. It seemed rude somehow to criticise the house and she must practise being polite or she might never return to her mother.

They walked past the bottom of the stairs, but this time she saw the passage which ran alongside and ended in a white-painted door.

Joe edged past her and opened it, pressing back for her to go before him. She shook her head and looked first at him and then back into the room. The light was vivid after the dark and she could see the corner of a deal table and the open garden door. She had never been in a kitchen before. ‘Do please go first,’ she said, keeping her voice to a whisper.

Joe smiled. ‘It’s difficult the first time in a new place, ain’t it,’ he whispered. ‘Follow me, but remember that Mother doesn’t eat girls, not on Thursdays anyway.’

She felt the smile begin as she walked in behind him. His voice was gentle and his smile was so wide that it seemed to take up half his face. His fair hair was tinged with red and he had freckles on the bridge of his nose. Her shoulders began to relax as she followed his broad back.

Joe’s mother was standing by the sink, wringing out some washing. She turned. ‘Come in, my dear. There’s bread on the table, butter and marmalade. Joe, you help Hannah find her way around and I’ll make some tea.’

Her smile was also broad and her voice drawled like Joe’s. She was dressed much as last night in clothes that flowed about her body instead of pinning everything up inside like a suit of armour. Hannah pulled at her bodice again. Mrs Arness wore her hair in a long loose plait which hung down her back, not coiled round her head as it had been when she had stood at the doorway with the oil lamp blowing in the evening breeze. Now, in daylight, Hannah saw that it was the same russet colour as the blouse she was wearing, a blouse that was undone at the neck. Her skirt was red and full. Hannah felt her collar. Yes, it was safely buttoned. She hardly dared look at Mrs Arness again, at her open neck which her parents would recoil from and claim was indecent.

‘Sit down then,’ Joe said, pulling out a chair from the table. He sat opposite in his tweed suit, the jacket of which had leather patches on the elbows, and pushed the wooden board that held the round cottage loaf over to her.

Hannah took a piece, covering her confusion with action, intrigued by the newness of this way of life. Was this how all Americans lived? Where was the silver toast rack and the servants who quietly served them? Where was the tension of correct behaviour? Beads of water pushed to the surface as she spread some butter, still ridged from the wooden platters. Joe pushed marmalade towards her.

‘Quince marmalade,’ he said. ‘Mother has made it every year since we’ve been here.’ He looked over his shoulder towards his mother who was hanging ironed sheets on the wooden slats of the airer, which she had lowered in front of the black leaded stove. Hannah liked the bitter taste, liked the warm soft neck of Mrs Arness which she now glanced at again and again as she stooped and stretched with the clean linen. Joe turned to her.

‘Excuse me, Hannah.’ He pushed himself up from the table with his hands and again she saw how rough they were, how big. His eyes were blue, like his mother’s, she noticed, as she watched Joe take the rope to raise the now laden airer. He was as big as Harry but not as big as her father and he had only a faint moustache, fair like his hair. She hoped he would not grow a beard because too much hair would hide his smile. She sat back in the chair, feeling its spokes against her back. The sun was pouring in through the door and windows and the room felt warm and dry; her back loosened and her shoulders drooped with the pleasure of just being.

Joe was talking to his mother as he carried out the washing she had just finished. Did people in Cornwall always talk to one another, she wondered, talk and laugh and eat in the kitchen? But she knew that was not so because at Eliza’s it was just like being at home.

There was a washing-line running along the path which led from the door and Joe was handing his mother the clothes. How very strange. She had never seen a man do that before and it pleased her, made her feel complete. Polly sent their washing to the woman who lived in the back streets. Hannah took more marmalade. It was good, very good. She watched as Mrs Arness came back towards the door.

‘Put a kettle on, would you, Hannah. I meant to but forgot.’ She smiled and returned to the garden, her skirt swirling out and the plait catching the sun.

Hannah felt uncertain again as she looked around the kitchen. Where was the kettle? What was a kettle? She wiped her hands, sticky from the quince, on her serviette and rose, looking through the door at Joe and his mother. They were talking again, not looking at this visitor of theirs who was so ignorant, so unworldly. She wanted to groan aloud but there wasn’t time. She hurried to the sink but there was nothing there. Perhaps it would be in the cupboards underneath – but there were only black pans like the old one that the gardener used to shell the peas into sitting on the glasshouse step. Would it do? Her skirt was dragging on the flagstoned floor. She moved one of the pans; it was heavy and black. She wanted to cry or to run away. Would Mrs Arness tell her father of her stupidity?

Then she heard footsteps behind and stood up, turning towards the sound. Would they stop smiling now that there was no kettle, no boiling water? But Joe did not; neither did his mother who said, ‘The kettle’s over on the side hob, Hannah. It’ll need filling, I’m afraid.’ She was pointing to the fire and Hannah nodded, brushing the dust from her skirt before she walked past the table and grasped the kettle. It too was heavy and she began to understand why Mrs Brennan insisted on employing only a good strong girl to help Cook in the kitchen.

At the sink the water splashed red-flecked from the tap into the kettle’s dark insides, and as it grew heavier in her hand her arms began to shake. She tightened her grip. The geranium on the windowsill was splashed from the force of the water and its smell was acrid. She turned to Mrs Arness.

‘Is it all right?’ she asked, pointing to the strange water, but suddenly the kettle was full and water began spilling over. She heaved, feeling the strain in her shoulders, and as she lifted it the gushing flow caught the edge of the kettle and sprayed her. It was cold and sank through to her skin but she held on to the kettle, heaving it on to the scrubbed drainer.

‘Oh, Hannah, not quite so much next time.’

Hannah flushed. ‘I’m sorry.’ She brushed at her soaked bodice and took the towel that Joe offered but at least Mrs Arness had said there would be a next time and it gave her a feeling of pleasure.

‘Rub yourself down with that,’ Joe said. ‘We’ll go out soon and the sun will sort it out for you.’ He tipped some of the water out into the sink and again she saw the red flecks.

‘That’s what I meant really.’ Hannah pointed to the red flakes which now lay on the bottom of the deep white sink. ‘Are they all right?’

‘Oh yes, they’re iron. They’ll make you good and strong, bring some colour to your cheeks.’ He turned and put the kettle on the hob and Hannah thought she would only have one cup because colour was something her mother did not like. She had a boiled egg too, while she waited for the tea.

‘If you don’t mind having things the wrong way round,’ Joe’s mother said, and Hannah did not mind; she loved the ease of this woman, this boy.

The egg had been collected that morning and it oozed thick and orange on to her spoon. The tea was strong and served in thick ceramic mugs that Mrs Arness had thrown on her potter’s wheel, Joe said, and Hannah thought that she would like to try that one day as he explained how the clay was worked when it was soft and malleable, then fired and painted. Hannah looked at Mrs Arness’s hands, they were wide and capable; safe hands. She liked to think of a woman creating something useful, something solid. It was strange but good. This whole world was good, it was full of words and useful work, not stitches and antimacassars.

Mrs Arness put the milk in first. Esther would have called her a miffer, and sniffed as she said that milk-in-firsts don’t know what’s what; but it was nice and tasted no different to Mother’s so why should it matter? She felt the question waiting to burst out of her but she pushed it down. No, she was going to behave, to do as Mother wanted, wasn’t she. She mustn’t make her worse than she had done already. Father had said that to her as she left and Hannah had felt pain that she had never known before twist inside her at the thought that she was at least part of the cause of her mother’s decline.

‘I think it would be nice to go across the moor today.’ Mrs Arness spoke as she folded up some dry washing. ‘Take Hannah in the jingle as far as Old Bernie’s and then have a walk, Joe. I have the books to sort out from last term. I’ve packed up the lunch.’

She put the folded washing on to a side table, passed Joe a half-full string bag which had been sitting on the pantry shelf and filled a flask with tea from the pot. The picnic bulged through the gaps in the bag and Joe slung it over his shoulder. Mrs Arness looked at Hannah and raised her eyes. ‘Careful, that’s Hannah’s pasty. It will be crumbs in a moment.’ Hannah laughed. The pain subsided. ‘Out you go now but take these round to the compost first, please.’ Mrs Arness swept the egg into a bucket which held potato peelings and lettuce.

The light and heat hit Hannah as though it had taken its hand to her. There was so much sky here above the garden and the fields and the distant moor. There were no other houses between them and the horizon. No wonder Mr Arness lived here. Wouldn’t Miss Fletcher love it, though the roofs of the village would have been better. She loved to insist that the girls drew roofs. The angles, the colour, the shadows, she would say. Her face would light up and her eyebrows rise as they did when she was absorbed and enthusiastic, which she was for most of the lessons, especially with Hannah. You, my dear, she would say, have so much to offer the world. Inside your head there is a brain and it should be exercised; a scholarship for you should be quite possible, I think. And she had passed some of the younger children over to Hannah for some coaching, to improve her confidence, she had said, but in addition it had unlocked a passion to teach which neither had known was there until then. Miss Fletcher had been pleased.

Hannah felt Joe’s hand on her arm. ‘Round here then.’ She followed him round the corner of the house, past a conservatory with a half-open door. There was a vine curling up the windows and out through two broken panes on the roof. Beyond was a narrow-shaped pile covered by an old carpet. At the bottom, dark earth, egg shells and cabbage stalks spilled on to the ground. Joe lifted a corner of the carpet and a heavy smell wafted out into the air. Hannah stepped back.

‘Why do you put them here?’ she asked, breathing at first through her mouth but then again through her nose because disease could rush in past the teeth, Mrs Brennan had told her, and surely smell was better than illness.

Joe finished with the bucket and clanged it down on the hard earth. It was rusted round the rim. ‘Well, we haven’t a pig at the moment so the peelings can go on the compost with the rest. It feeds the ground when we come to spring planting. Senseless to waste anything, isn’t it?’ He looked up at her, squinting in the sun. ‘Don’t you do the same in London then?’

She shook her head. ‘Men come and take it, I suppose. The maids see to it.’

He put his head to one side and there was a faint smile on his face.

Hannah felt a rush of anger. ‘Well, don’t you have a maid?’

‘Only one and she’s on holiday. Her sister helps if necessary in term time, when Mother runs the school.’

Hannah’s interest was immediate. ‘Oh, a school. I didn’t know your mother was a teacher. How wonderful. How many boys do you have? Does she teach them Classics? What about German? I’d like to learn German.’

‘Steady,’ he interrupted her, leaning over to pick up the bucket. ‘Yes, she does teach Classics, no, she doesn’t teach German. And we have six boys and five girls.’ He was walking ahead of her now back to the kitchen, the bucket swinging from his hand, the string basket still over his shoulder.

‘Girls and boys,’ she called, shocked.

‘Of course,’ he called back. ‘It’s crazy otherwise, isn’t it? What’s different about girls and boys. They’ve got arms, legs and a brain, haven’t they? And they’ve got to learn to live together, haven’t they? That’s what Mother and Father say anyway.’ His voice faded as he entered the kitchen.

Hannah stood. A school with boys and girls, and Joe had said that his mother and father thought girls had a brain. His mother taught them together, in the same room, which was sinful in London, in her world. A world that seemed increasingly dark, set against the one which surrounded her here. Her confusion, her thoughts were returning. Her questions about life were stirring again. She explored her shock as though she were a tongue probing a sore tooth but found no answer.

She walked down the red-brick path leading to the dried stone wall which surrounded the garden. On either side of the path were marigolds mingling with lettuce. Lavender and rosemary were set further back and were already busy with bees. Geraniums were in pots, some tilted as they had settled half on the path, half on the earth. Lemon verbena grew amongst some red full-blown roses. Sin was difficult, she thought, as she knelt by the strawberry beds beyond the flowers. They came right up to the path which was warm beneath her knees. Who decided what sin was? God, she supposed, but men were the ones who passed it on. Surely, though, it was a sin to waste goodness as they did in London when here it was put back into the ground and new things grown? Why didn’t the Vicar concern himself with that instead of shouting about damnation each Sunday? And why was it a sin to teach boys and girls together? Joe was right. That could not be wrong, surely? She sighed, grateful for the hardness of the brick through her skirt. That at least was something definite and so were the plants before her.