A look passed between Mrs Crowther and her husband, for from all we heard, north of the British Bechuanaland border, across the Limpopo, was not the safest of places, either. Cecil Rhodes, among his other ambitions, had grandiose plans for the expansion of white supremacy in South Africa and beyond; a strong desire to see the British flag planted, in fact, right over the African continent, but this did not seem to be a view universally shared by the black people in those countries he had annexed. The previous year, a war had broken out, when some tribes thought Rhodes had cheated them over an agreement to mine gold on their land. White people had been massacred and pioneer settlers in outlying farms had been murdered in their beds. The rebellion had eventually been put down, their leader, Lobengula was dead, but if one was to believe all one read, that would not be the end of it. The battle was over but the war was not yet won.
So, between the warring black tribes in the north, and Kruger and his Boers further south, Africa was not the most tranquil place on earth at the moment, and in view of all this, Lyall was wise enough to see that he could make no rash promises for Lyddie's absolute safety. In all honesty, he was forced to admit that the situation remained volatile, but swore that Lyddie's welfare would always be his prime concern.
I saw that this attitude had met with Mrs Crowther's approval. She sighed and looked from one to the other and though she said
nothing just then, I sensed that Lyddie's battle was won. Anyone who had Edith Crowther's approval also had her husband's. Lyall was showing himself to be an honourable and right-thinking, far-sighted man, much more than the dashing adventurer his family made him out to be. She quite clearly believed that, whatever turned out, they could entrust their daughter to him, and that Lyddie's feelings in the matter should be respected. Though younger than Lyall by a decade, she wasn't a young woman to give her affections lightly.
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All this talk of sweeping Lyddie away to an exotic, unknown country sounded to me very fine and romantic, despite the danger, and I was very happy for her that she'd found such a man whom she could love and marry, but I had my doubts about the civilised aspect of the sort of life she would be forced to lead (which in my ignorance and insularity, I then equated only with the availability of as many books as I could get hold of; with cultivated people and the museums and art galleries and such-like of which Rouncey had spoken so warmly) and I could scarcely conceal my dismay that their marriage would necessitate her going back with him to the other ends of the earth, to lead such an isolated and perilous existence.
But Lyddie swept aside all objections and declared blithely that there were surely many worse places to settle, set up home and raise a family, she would soon make friends with the other expatriates in Bulawayo. I was sure she would. Everybody liked Lyddie, because she liked most people, and she was always so good-natured, she'd do anything for anybody, as her Aunt Lydia, for whom she'd been named, was fond of saying. But I looked at the vastness of Africa on the map and found that large areas of it, like the rest of the world, were indeed reassuringly pink. But oh! there were sure to be wild animals, mosquitoes and snakes and other unmentionable terrors. She might die of some unknown tropical disease. She could be killed in a way too horrible to contemplate by some black heathen. How could she survive? I realised on due reflection that this last was an unnecessary question. Lyddie was born to survive anything.
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I would have hated her to think me jealous, and so as the preparations for her wedding went ahead, we had a great deal of fun shopping for her trousseau. Apart from the sensible brown holland outfits of the sort Lyall had advised, and Miss Lumb ran up for her, Lyddie also managed to acquire quantities of pretty underclothes, shady hats and dresses in light silky materials with the new, narrow silhouette, drawn smooth and tight across the hips to fall in graceful folds behind â” Not an old-fashioned bustle in sight, Hallelujah!” she declared happily. Her mother tutted a little, but as Lyddie pointed out, the heavy coats and skirts with their leg-of-mutton sleeved jackets, the sensible shirtwaists and ties which were fast becoming almost a uniform here at the moment would surely be insupportable in all that heat.
Mrs Crowther confessed to me privately that she was sure she was never going to see her only daughter again. But having weighed up the situation in her sensible, down-to-earth way, and come to the conclusion that denying her would cause only more unhappiness all round, she forbore to say this to her starry-eyed girl. Having come to terms with the idea that it was inevitable, she carefully packed up a thin china tea service, delicately painted with roses, that had been her own mother's most cherished possession. She saw to it that Lyddie was equipped with a good supply of Carter's Little Liver Pills, several tins of Benger's Food, carron oil in blue bottles for sunburn, and several pounds of Lipton's tea. Then she told Lyddie, “Go, and make a good man happy.”
“And never forget you are a daughter of Empire,” advised Alderman Crowther, which made us giggle.
For my part, I couldn't help adding, “Oh, but how I shall miss you.”
“But you have Willie, Hannah dear,” Lyddie reminded me.
It was true enough that I, too, by now, had the interest of a young man â well, not so young, but young enough. He was called Willie Dyson and had already attained the coveted position of manager at the Crowther blanket mill. He still lived with his mother, and was good to her; he sang in the church choir, and he wished for an understanding between us. I knew I was very lucky, for he was a dear, good-living man, who always showed me
great respect, and I reproached myself for wishing he were, sometimes, maybe rather more exciting, just a little less sensible, and that if I cast my lot in with him, my future life would not be so predictable.
“Or there's always Walter Beaumont,” she added wickedly.
“Not even in jest, Lyddie!”
For I might have looked higher than Willie Dyson, had I not been so choosy. I might have accepted the proposal of the new curate, who had a substantial private income and his sights set on a bishopric. He thought I should make a good wife for a clergyman â I was, after all, the daughter of one. But Walter Beaumont looked like a frog, and spittle collected at the corners of his mouth when he spoke, adding to the impression. And even his most ordinary utterances sounded like a sermon. No, I shuddered, if wedded bliss meant marrying the Reverend Beaumont, then single I would remain for the rest of my life. Even though, above all things in the world, I could imagine nothing worse than the fate of being an old maid, known as Poor Hannah to all the family.
For more than anything, I wanted to know what it was like to love and be loved. To explore those mysterious, melting feelings that made me long to know how it would be to surrender oneself completely to another, to submit with a reckless intensity to the passion I dreamed of when I lost myself in my books and read of women like Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina.
I did not somehow think that would happen with Willie Dyson.
Lyddie was married to Lyall Armitage in November, and they sailed for South Africa immediately afterwards. The household seemed unbelievably quiet. Flat and empty. January was a particularly bad month, with a bitterly cold wind and, what with thick snow lying on the moors and nine-foot high drifts blocking the roads over the tops, we were confined to the house for much of the time. I wrote letters to Lyddie. I read anything I could get hold of. I wound up the gramophone and put on her favourite records, but there seemed no point to it, when there was no one there to sing the songs with me, or to practice dance steps with. I took up sewing, an occupation hitherto despised, and found that if I put my mind to it, I was quite good with my needle, and was able to copy some of those new modern dress styles Lyddie had bought, though they were hardly the sort of clothes Willie would consider suitable for his wife to wear, especially the one of beautiful, heavy peacock-blue silk made over from Mrs Crowther's best frock, which she declared she would never fit into again. It was beyond my imagining, as I fingered the soft sensuousness of the material under my fingers, when I would ever have the chance to wear it. However, the dressmaking kept me occupied. I was rudderless, and longed for something to happen, yet I was wary of praying for it. God answered prayers, that I had never doubted, but not always in the way you wanted.
Then came letters from Lyddie, full of excited accounts of their journey to Cape Town: concerts on board ship, dancing and entertainments every evening, dining at the captain's table â there seemed no end to it. They had stopped en route at Madeira, a volcanic island rising straight from the sea, a miracle island of flowers and sunshine, where Lyddie had ridden up the steep paths to the very top on an ancient, but very steady and patient old cob, before thrillingly tobogganing down in a sort of basket sledge. Life so far had been nothing but fun, and she was making the most of it. As a new bride, she was feted and spoiled a little. Everyone was so kind. Her new dresses were much admired.
At the end of February, a whole bundle of letters arrived at
once, again full of amusing incidents and the surprises and excitements of her new life. Cape Town was a very fashionable place, modern and full of wealthy Uitlanders with mining interests in Kimberley and Johannesburg, with their big new houses and imported newfangled motorcars, and the newly-weds had stayed there to enjoy a giddy few weeks of social life before embarking on the long, tiring journey by train up-country, to the terminus of the great railway line which Cecil Rhodes was determined to drive right through the African continent, from Cape Town to Cairo.
âThe train journey was not exactly comfortable, but it was luxury compared to what we were about to endure. The railway is still not within five hundred odd miles of Bulawayo, and I was horrified that after leaving the train on the Bechuanaland border, we would have to make the rest of our journey by nothing less than a stage coach! Fancy, it was a great, heavy, lumbering thing that shakes you from side to side like anything, drawn by ten mules, which were very sorry-looking creatures, but better than an ox-cart, I suppose. When I saw the state of the roads (if such you can call the deeply rutted, sandy tracks, up the mountain and down again) I was forced to admit that anything else would have been impossible. You can see I have a lot to learn!! We stopped at night in primitive roadside inns, and saw much wild life on the way, lions and giraffes, a leopard once, and game birds there for the shooting. At one point, we came across at least twenty ostriches sitting down in the road and blocking the way, terrifying the mules who refused to budge an inch further until the native coachmen jumped down and chased the birds off. You should have seen them run! Such queer things, hardly a bird at all, it seems, since they're taller than a man and have bald heads and big popping eyes, long thin necks and a very disagreeable expression. For all the world like Councillor Greenwood
.' We all laughed when we read this, and within the family, the manager of the local Co-op stores was forever afterwards known to us all as Councillor Ostrich. â
It was very hot
,' she went on, â
but oh, what a beautiful land this is, north of the border. Lyall promises even more beauty when he takes me on what he calls a “safari”, further into the interior, where all is lush and green and teeming with wildlife, and there are spectacular views. As for my house here â
well, it's a dear little place, never mind its tin roof, and I'm determined to make it homelike. I've hung lace curtains and we ordered a piano and several other things in Cape Town, which are to be sent up to us and will make it more comfortable â though what condition they will be in when they arrive is hard to imagine â better than I was, I hope. My insides felt stirred up like Christmas pudding.
âThere was a snake in the garden yesterday. I hit it on the head with a spade that Jacob, our boy, had left against the wall, and killed it stone dead, though I am told I must never try to do this again, as it was just a matter of luck.'
I put the letter down and poked my finger through the bars of the canary's cage that hung in the window overlooking the same old view of the town spread below, the descending grey stone roofs against the dull green Pennine slopes, the grey skies and the tall mills shadowing the road through the valley, their even taller chimneys billowing out smoke. I stroked the bright yellow feathers of the little bird. He sounded happy enough in his cage, singing his heart out, year after year, but perhaps it was despair.
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For the next twelve months, Lyddie's letters continued in the same cheerful, optimistic vein, full of her new experiences. My own went on in the same old predictable, routine way. I couldn't yet bring myself to give my hand in marriage to Willie.
And then, out of the blue, came horrifying news. The thing we had all dreaded had happened: a further rebellion, out there in the country which we were now told we must call Rhodesia, after Cecil Rhodes. Now, in a new outbreak by the concerted native tribes, the citizens of Bulawayo had escaped being massacred only by a strategic miracle. Lyddie and Lyall had lost their home and practically everything they possessed â but they had, thank God, escaped unharmed, by fleeing southwards, to the frontier town of Mafeking, on the Transvaal-Bechuanaland border, the big railway depot on the line from Cape Town, and consequently an important trading post.
It was there that they were now to make their home, at least until the present troubles should be over. Lyddie typically made light of the danger they'd been in during the weeks of their escape and wrote that the small town promised well; it was an expanding and prosperous place, with a sizeable British expatriate
community already living there, plus all the amenities of banks, hotels, and even a racecourse, and naturally, a cricket ground. It was not only the administrative centre of British Bechuanaland but also the headquarters of the Bechuanaland Protectorate Regiment and the British South Africa Police â and things were always lively with uniforms around, weren't they?
Mrs Crowther was only too happy that they were safe, never mind the details, and comforted to hear that there would be other Englishwomen with whom Lyddie could become acquainted, and that indeed, there were actually people living there who came from Dewsbury, already known to the Crowthers as friends of friends.
However â¦reading anxiously between the lines of subsequent letters, it seemed that the move was not suiting Lyddie as well as she'd imagined it would. Whereas her previous letters had made it reassuringly obvious to us that she was exceedingly happy with her new life and her new husband, the ones from Mafeking had become disquieting. For the first time she complained of homesickness; she wrote that it was, after all, nothing of a place, the climate was unbearable; she felt very low in spirits. All this was contrary to everything we knew of Lyddie and worried Mrs Crowther very much, until another letter came to say she was expecting a child. “There. I knew there had to be some reason why she wasn't herself â this explains a good deal. I'm so very relieved.” She was wreathed in smiles, but all the same, I could see she still had something on her mind.
In the end, when we were alone in the drawing room one evening after dinner, she came and sat down beside me and took hold of my hand. It was some time before she said anything, and when at last she came to the point, it was about Lyddie she spoke. At a time like this a young woman needed her mother, she began. Things did not always go as smoothly as they ought, and particularly with a first child. Women were inclined to have strange fancies, especially during the first few months, and in view of what Lyddie had been through, Mrs Crowther was afraid that she might be finding the prospect of motherhood a little alarming, coupled with the loneliness she must be feeling in Lyall's enforced absences, due to his business commitments.
Had it not been for her wretched hip, which had been giving her a great deal of pain lately and was even forcing her to use a stick, Mrs Crowther would have gone out there herself to be with Lyddie, but in the circumstances, that was scarcely possible. She hesitated before going on tentatively, quite unlike her usual brisk self â¦would I, she asked, consider going out to Africa â just until Lyddie's child was born, and maybe, perhaps, staying for a little while afterwards, to see her settled? At the Crowthers' expense, of course. If the idea did not appeal to me I was to feel under no obligation to accept. “Though it would ease my mind so wonderfully ⦠on the other hand, everything sounds so dreadful out there, I don't know that we've any right to ask it of you, so think it over carefully, Hannah dear â and before making any decision, will you go and listen to what Mr Crowther has to say?”
It was highly unlikely that whatever Alderman Crowther would have to say on the subject would make any difference. Excitement pulsed through my whole body at this glorious opportunity, which I had no intentions of allowing to pass me by. But I went to see him in his study, because in his rather bluff way he'd always shown me affection, and since Lyddie had left I'd become quite a favourite of his. I knew he had my welfare at heart and would give me good advice.
He watched me gravely where I sat on the low fender stool, packing his pipe for him, as I did every night. “I wonder if you quite appreciate how dangerous the situation is out there, Hannah?” he began.
“I can hardly fail to understand, after what's happened to Lyddie and Lyall â”
“Aye, they've had a lucky escape, for which we must thank God.”
“But now they're in a place of safety â” I began
“For the time being.”
I said nothing, busying myself with finishing the pipe, putting the lid on the Chinese tobacco jar and taking the pipe across to him. He patted my hand and smiled sadly. I suppose he knew my mind was already made up, but he waited patiently while I resumed my seat by the fire and tried to find an answer. I didn't wish to appear rebellious or ungrateful after everything he'd
done for me, but I was finding it difficult to know what to say.
“It's not simply the situation up there in Rhodesia, of course, not by any means,” he said at last, perhaps trying to make it easy for me, though I suspect he knew, at the back of his mind, just how I felt. “Lyall once remarked that if war with the Boers came about, he believed it would be confined to the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. I don't think anybody seriously believes that any more.”
“If there is going to be a war, that's all the more reason â” I began.
He held up his hand. “I wouldn't willingly send you into such a situation. My dear, headstrong daughter declined to listen to her parents' advice; she stepped into the unknown without so much as a backward glance, but at least she'd chosen to go with the man she loves, whereas yours is a slightly different case. I believe you're level-headed enough to see this, lass.”
I drew myself up. “Send? If I go, it'll be entirely of my own free will, Mr Crowther.”
He made one last attempt. “You're an intelligent young woman, Hannah, and I know no one who could benefit more from this chance to see something of the world, but I wouldn't want you to blind yourself to what you might be facing.”
Lyddie's departure had left me feeling very much at odds with myself, try as I might to combat the not very commendable feeling that life had dealt me a wretched hand. I should never cease to be grateful for the love and kindness shown to me by these dear people, who'd always encouraged me to regard myself as one of their own. But I knew I wasn't one of them, nor could I ever expect to be. My circumstances were entirely different, and I was wretched at being condemned to a grey and uneventful future, never to know anything outside the narrow confines of the West Riding, my world circumscribed by Sunday School teaching and the thrill of a weekly shopping expedition to Dewsbury, which was larger than Bridge End, though that wasn' t saying much. But now, here I was, being offered a positive chance to do something about it â nothing less, in fact, than escape. My life, which had been drab and forlorn, was suddenly filled with colour and hope. The cage door had opened and I
could at last spread my wings and fly towards the sun.
“If Lyddie's in danger â and in her condition, too â I wish for nothing more than to be with her. I think I shall have to go, Mr Crowther.”
In fairness to myself, I have to say that I believe I would have gone, anyway, however bleak the prospect had been. Not only for myself, but also for the Crowthers, as much as for Lyddie. Because I loved them, as I knew they, out of their goodness, had found it in their hearts to love me.