The street noises became quieter as the shadows grew even longer and now the sun was low and the leaves of the pear tree were darker. The birds were quieter and Hannah’s hand was warm on hers again and her head was on her lap and it was as it had been for these last few evenings. Edith moved her fingers slightly and felt her daughter’s hair, soft and fine as it fell free of pins, brown against the faint pink of the blanket.
She looked at Hannah’s profile, the wide mouth, the high cheekbones, the tiredness etched deep. Soon, very soon, Hannah’s waiting would be over and Edith was satisfied that it should be so. There was so much that her daughter wanted to do, so much that she had held her back from doing, but soon, my darling, I will set you free. She felt no pain at the thought of her death, just a satisfaction that she and her daughter had found such love. She thought of Eliza and the sea which buffeted the cliffs and the moors and the cry of the gulls. She thought of Simon in that hot, parched land. She looked at the shadowed garden – the wind was brushing at the tops of the trees, rustling the leaves – and she longed to see the two children again, their strength, their joy and down through the fernery they came. Those two children running, running through the grass, swinging on the rope, round and round and round and the sun was high again and warm and now she could hear them; so clearly, so very clearly. Mama, Mama, they were calling. Come and see us, Mama; and the girl turned and her hair, her chestnut hair, trailed out behind her and her dress was white with a blue sash.
‘Mama, Mama, come and play with us,’ she called and held her hand towards the house. And Edith felt so strong again, so young and she stretched out her hand towards the child her daughter had once been.
‘I’m coming, my darling,’ she called. ‘There will be no more waiting now.’
Hannah would not allow the curtains to be drawn across her mother’s window. There was black on the door-knocker, black on the mirrors, black dresses, black crêpe on her father’s hat. There had been black horses with black ostrich plumes, drawing black carriages, black veils over faces, black gloves on hands, black-edged handkerchiefs to eyes. Her mother had been light and full of love in this darkest of houses and no, she would not have the curtains shrouding the room as they shrouded every other room.
‘Leave those curtains alone,’ she repeated again as Mrs Brennan put her hand towards the drapes.
‘You, Miss Hannah, will have to deal with your father if you insist with this impropriety.’ She was dressed heavily in black and crossed her arms now, standing between Hannah and the light. Hannah sat in her mother’s wicker chair.
‘Move from the window, Mrs Brennan.’ Her voice was measured. ‘Move from the window, I can’t see the tree.’
She watched as the woman turned to the garden and then back to Hannah again.
‘These curtains should be drawn. You know that is the case. I would have taken it up with your father but he, poor man, has been prostrate with grief.’
‘These curtains will not be drawn and the window will not be closed. Mother did not like the sun to be shut out. Now leave me alone.’
She sat quite still seeing the brightness at the side of the bulk which stood between her and the garden. Prostrate with grief, was he? Yes, he had looked the part, hadn’t he, especially when the will had been read and her mother had left to her daughter a Cornish house, Penbrin, which Eliza had bought on her behalf, and enough money from the interest on her share of the Penhallon mine to run it as the holiday home she had longed for. To her son she had left the homestead that Uncle Simon had bought in the Transvaal before he died and which had come through to his sister on his death. Yes, her father had been suitably grief-stricken, hadn’t he? Mrs Brennan still stood between her and the light, the curtain in her hand.
‘Leave that curtain alone, Mrs Brennan. Miss Hannah does not want the curtains drawn, or did you not hear correctly?’ Harry’s voice was clear and calm and very cold and Hannah wondered how long he had been standing there.
Hannah watched Mrs Brennan’s hand drop and her face stiffen.
‘Very well, Master Harry,’ she said and walked with careful strides from the room.
‘It still takes a man to issue orders, doesn’t it?’ she murmured as Harry came over to stand beside her, his hand on her shoulder. She liked its weight and warmth and was glad he was still there.
‘If you and Miss Fletcher have anything to do with it, that will soon change,’ he said, pressing down with his hand, feeling the thinness which had come within the space of a few days.
‘I’m lost without Mother, Harry. I love her so and she has been my whole life, day and night for so long now.’ Hannah kept her voice calm. She must be calm because once she cried she feared she would never stop.
Harry stroked her cheek and they stayed together, looking out into the garden until they heard the sound of the luncheon gong.
‘Come along now. Father is expected for luncheon. We should be there. It’s my last time, you know.’
Hannah did know but she did not want to think of that and so she let the knowledge merge with the sun and the green leaves and the pain of it all.
She rose and walked past the bed with its fine lawn bedspread and the sheets which were freshly starched because Hannah had not ordered otherwise. But why should she? Her mother was dead so there was no need of softness. The banister was smooth and cool and the hall was dark with only the red-stained light penetrating, falling on the carpet and the silver tray which held black-edged cards. She would not look at those.
He was waiting for them, sitting at the head of the table and the gas lamps were on, hissing quietly, lighting the darkness which cloaked them as they sat behind drawn curtains. Hannah sat opposite her brother not looking at the table but down at the table-mat, the silver knife and fork, the spoon and fork, the crystal glass, and then the tantalus on the sideboard, the stag at bay looming over them, hanging large on the wall. Then she looked at Harry and he smiled and his foot beneath the table touched hers and she knew that she could not bear the space which he had partly filled being sucked empty again as it would be when he left. How strange, she thought, to think that he only partly filled it when once it had been his entirely. How very strange. But she was too tired to think any more. She barely heard the sounds of her father intoning the grace, just saw his face, heavy-browed, thick-lipped, his moustache as neat as ever. She would not look at him but at Polly as she brought the cold meats thinly sliced.
‘So, tomorrow the big adventure starts, my boy,’ her father said, his knife cutting already thin cucumber, his big hands lifting it to his mouth. He did not look at Hannah. He had not looked at her since the will was read.
She listened as Harry talked, telling of the voyage, the introductions, the job which was waiting at one of the biggest gold-mines. She watched as her father nodded and smiled. She smelt the ham – ‘honey-roasted’ – but could not eat.
She moved as Polly took her plate and brought fruit to them all, and she watched her father as he cut away the peel of the apple, his big hands engulfing the knife and the fruit, cutting deep, taking more than just the skin in great slashing slices.
‘And so it will be just you and me, my dear,’ he said and Hannah did not look at him but only at the gouged apple and the peel which lay savaged on his plate. ‘I feel that you will perform satisfactorily in your mother’s place.’
The white of the apple was darkening now. ‘And as for this nonsense of a holiday home. Well, we can put that down to the meanderings of a feeble mind. I shall instruct our solicitor, on your behalf, to sell it. It is time now that we moved out into the suburbs. Uncle Thomas is thinking of doing so and so we shall use that money more fruitfully, I think.’
The peel was brown now. Hannah remembered how Mrs Arness had dipped the peel of a cooking apple into sugar and how she and Joe had bitten one small piece at a time, hunched over the kitchen table, their faces screwing up at the tartness and then relaxing as the sweetness came through.
She felt Harry’s foot on he
rs and he smiled and she felt tired, so tired, and she watched as he rose and nodded to her. Her apple was still green and whole on her white plate.
She looked at her father, at the smoke which was streaming from between the gaps in his teeth, at his eyes which were without light beneath his brows. They looked into hers now and were cold and hard and full of hate and so she rose and walked with Harry from the room because the meal was finished and she had not noticed its passing.
He took her across the terrace, holding her arm. It would be summer in South Africa by the time he reached the Cape and he hoped that he would have time to see his uncle’s house. Eliza had told him that the homestead was barren but that Simon had loved it; the views across the plains, the isolation, and it was good to think that there was something of his own in this new land he was going to.
They moved down the steps and on to the yellow grass and he crouched and rubbed the dry soil pulling Hannah to a halt as he did so.
‘It will be dusty like this only more so,’ he said, shielding his face from the sun as he looked up at her, and she nodded.
‘Simon told Eliza that the soil was red,’ she said but her voice was flat and without interest and Harry watched as she walked from him towards the shade of the pear tree.
He rubbed his fingers in the earth again. It was hard to imagine red soil in place of this pale brown dust. He rose and brushed his hands together then followed Hannah.
It was cooler in the shade and the smell of overripe pears was pleasant.
‘Will you stay with Father?’ he asked, watching as Hannah picked at the bark.
‘No, I shall leave tomorrow when you do.’ She was still picking at the bark, trying to prise a piece away from the trunk, not looking at him.
Harry had known that she would. ‘Where will you go?’
‘To Miss Fletcher’s.’ She was still not looking at him but digging and pulling and scratching at the bark, her eyes seeing nothing else, her breath hard and fast and loud enough for him to hear. Her fingers were red now, red and bleeding, and Harry took her wrists and pulled at her hands but she fought him, straining towards the tree, her nails torn.
‘No, Hannah, leave it.’ He did not shout but pulled her to him holding her hands in one of his; forcing them into stillness.
‘Mother liked the bark. The layers, you know.’ And he heard her voice and it was as though it came from a great distance.
‘She’s dead, Hannah.’
‘And you are leaving me too.’ Now her voice was loud and she tore from his hands, and beat her fists against the trunk. ‘You are leaving me too.’
And he took her again, and again she pulled from him. ‘Don’t go, please don’t go because the empty space is coming again.’
He held her, saying, ‘I can’t stay. I have to go.’
He could hear the breeze now in the tree and he spoke into her hair which was tearing loose and falling on her face and he held her tighter, rocking her, hearing her words, her grief, looking out on the garden. It was so neat with its hedges, its roses, the neat alyssum and asters and there, across the lawn, were the hutches and the horse-chestnut and the rope.
So he took her now, pulling her over the close-cut grass, talking of how they had fed and nursed their pets, how they had played and thrown the balls, how they had run and run until they fell, how they had swung until the air rushed through their bodies, and as he spoke he knew it was to remind himself also because it would be years before he came this way again.
At length they sat beneath the horse-chestnut, cool in its shade, the rope knotted and dangling, frayed and old, and Hannah said that she would not let her father have her house or her money and Harry nodded. She said that when she left she would not tell her father, but just go, leaving a note with Mrs Brennan, and Harry thought it best. She said that there was much to do. She was free now to fight as other women were but there was the home too. There was work to be done at school and on Sundays. She talked on, sometimes with strength, sometimes with tiredness but Harry was pleased because now she was thinking of the future and he knew that she would survive, as she had always done.
They sat back, their heads against the tree, looking up through the branches, seeing the green, spiked cases which they had once dislodged with sticks and Hannah breathed in the scent of the summer. It was the first time that she had done so since her mother died.
Harry stood, brushing his trousers, the dust pale against the black of the cloth. She watched him as he took the rope and sawed at a strand with his pocket-knife, tucking it into his inside pocket.
‘I need a reminder of all this,’ he said, waving his hand down the rough garden, and she nodded but knew that she had no need of such things because all this would never leave her; and with this thought came the realisation that she was strong and she was free and her life was just beginning. But there was one more thing she had to do before her work could begin. It was something she should have done five years ago and she hoped it was not too late.
Her father found her note when he returned from taking Harry to the station. It was propped up on the drawing-room mantelshelf against the filigree miniature of his father. The white envelope stood out sharply against the black crepe which draped the mirror. It was dark in the room and he carried the letter across to the french window, pulling a curtain to one side, brushing against the pampas-grass and picking it off as he opened the sheet of writing paper. The light was too bright and he turned to one side, wondering who had written a letter without using mourning paper, and then he read:
Dear Father,
With mother’s untimely death I feel that there is no longer a reason for me to stay beneath your roof. Mrs Brennan is conversant with your needs and I have instructed her to continue until you instruct otherwise.
There is much that I need to do with my life and I cannot proceed as I would wish unless I have complete independence. I already have financial freedom owing to my teacher’s salary and I have instructed your solicitor to hand over the deeds of the house and details of my financial bequest to Messrs Pain and Garrot who will in future act for me.
I will be resident with Miss Fletcher and will not be coerced into returning. I wish you a measure of peace, Father.
Your daughter,
Hannah.
John Watson stood at the window, hearing the clock, the birds in the garden, and then he turned, looking from the black-draped mirror to the tables scattered around the room, the velvet snake, the ornaments, the Indian carpet, the chairs with their white antimacassar that she, his daughter, had worked for him. He walked slowly across to the fireplace and took her letter and burnt it, holding the corner until all the rest was blackened, and then he let it fall into the hearth. He could feel the rage now, filling him, making him want to scream out that name. His breath was fast as he turned and strode to each chair, taking and tearing each antimacassar until all that was left were shreds, stark against the carpet.
Now he moved slowly towards the stairs, each step deliberate and in time with words which rolled round his head as he cursed his daughter and all those like her. Up he went, past the room where his wife had died, past his own bedroom and then on past Harry’s room and up until he was there, and now he opened her door.
There was nothing left of her here; her books were gone, her photographs. He flung open the door of the wardrobe and there was only her old school coat and he could not tear that, the seams were too strong, so he took his pocket-knife and held the coat in his left hand while he slashed and cut until there was nothing left to recognise.
He moved to the bed, her bed, the one she had slept in last night, and the smell of her was still on the sheets and he tore them once, twice, and again and again, and when he was finished he left the room, sweat falling into his eyes, and his rage still there as he strode from the house.
She is dead to me, he told his solicitor, she does not exist any more. And he walked through the park, past nannies who wheeled babies, past children who played with balls, pas
t ducks that swam. On and on he walked until the streets grew mean and narrow and dark and he hated Hannah, her wide mouth, her brown hair, her brown eyes, the way she swung when she walked. He hated her as he had hated her mother, his mother. Oh God, he groaned deep inside his head as he came to the path that ran by the river.
The stench filled his head. How dare she neglect her filial duty, her obedience to her father. How dare she have thoughts and plans that he knew nothing of. How dare she take it upon herself to make her own decisions.
The path was dry and he kicked up dust which caught in his throat and he coughed, putting his gloved hand to his mouth. The women were here as always and he chose one with a flick of his fingers and gripped her brown hair in his gloved hand and before all thought left him he cursed Hannah once more. How dare she reject him too, he thought, and he knew that soon he would call out that word again – mother.
12
The same afternoon Hannah walked down the road in Fulham past the butcher’s. She breathed in the smell from the baker’s and this time there was no one heaving furniture from a shuttered shop into a large furniture dray drawn by two large horses.
The noise was different too. There were still the cries of the hawkers and the street-traders but added to the clattering horse-drawn transport was the deeper and more violent roar of motor-cars and one omnibus which passed in a cloud of dust and caused a horse to shy, spilling its load. The sounds of curses were sharp and harsh and Hannah walked quickly now, moving in and out of the stream of other walkers. Her carpet-bag was heavy and she felt the pull of muscles in her shoulder as she passed it across to her other hand.
There were no dahlias today and so she stopped and bought watercress from an old woman with a shawled head who smiled and showed blackened teeth as she wound old newspaper round the dripping, fine-haired roots.
A Time for Courage Page 22