Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  She did not think it could happen, really; not at least for a lie such as she had told, a lie to protect something so good and beautiful as her afternoon with Robert. God would not be just, to damn people for as little as that.

  Or was it so little, to lie to your parents about being with a man who offered to seduce you - to take you away to live as his concubine in a distant, immoral city? Worse, to dream of actually going away with a man whom she had only spoken to four times in her whole life! They had first met three weeks ago, when her pony had gone lame and he had helped her get the stone out of its foot; and twice since then, secretly, like today. She had not meant to keep the secret of the first meeting from her father, but no-one had asked, and once the secret was begun and the second meeting arranged, it was not easy to reveal.

  She saw Robert’s face in her mind, so seemingly sincere and loving, as he asked her to come back to London with him. Did he really love her, as he said? Since she had known him, and begun to lie to her parents about where she had been, she had come to see how easy it was to play a part, to fall in love with your own performance so that you believed something to be true when you said it, which you did not believe in before or after. Was that perhaps Robert’s art, in wooing women? If it was, she both loved and hated him for it - loved him, that he could make a moment true, for its own time; hated him, for his inconstancy.

  So she came back to the other, troubling vision, of another Robert that she had never seen — a Robert with a face hard and set and cruel, hammering on someone’s door with a pistol after dark, holding a lantern close to the owner’s face to question him, bursting into a pregnant lady’s room to search it, ignoring all protests. It was hard to believe, yet such stories did not usually come from nowhere, even if they were exaggerated. Did she want to trust herself to a man like that?

  Then she thought of Tom. She had known Tom all her life. She remembered how often they had played together; for they had been born in the same week nineteen years ago, in October 1666, the year of the great fire in London. Ann remembered how they had played at mothers and fathers, first with Ann’s dolls, and later with their own younger brothers and sisters, in play houses they had built wherever they could. Her mother had told her how she and Adam had laughed to see their own speech and manners so perfectly aped; and when the younger toddlers got under their feet, talked of sending them to ‘Tom and Ann’s’ as though it were a real neighbour’s house, rather than the straw one that they had built for a day in the stable. Always in these games, Ann had taken the lead, while Tom provided the strength — she remembered how marvellous it had been to have someone so strong to lift things, to do whatever she wanted. She remembered playing horses, running across the fields behind him with a rope around his waist like reins, thinking she was riding the largest and most powerful horse in the world which she could turn in any direction she liked.

  At school it had been the same. He had protected her physically, so that she had never needed to fear anyone of her own age, but she had helped him with his schoolwork, which he found hard.

  Yet it was this which threatened to separate them. The older they got, the more Ann saw that for Tom, school and books were a chore, to be got through somehow and then forgotten as quickly as possible; whereas for her, they had become a growing source of wonder and delight. She had borrowed them from the schoolteacher and the surgeon, and forever been pestering her father to bring her back something to read from his travels; and they had opened up a hunger in her, for a world beyond her own little country town. But Tom saw little point in reading anything except the Prayer Book and the Bible, and recently, at Ann’s insistence, Pilgrim’s Progress; so his vigorous thoughts had been easily channelled down the straight and narrow path by Israel Fuller, who believed, as far as Ann could see, that the Bible held the answer to all possible questions of human conduct, and himself uniquely qualified to interpret it.

  She thought of Israel Fuller, preaching fervently as he so often did, his face half covered by the black beard that grew nearly up to his eyes. She feared him, but did not always agree with what he said; but Tom, it seemed to her, almost worshipped the man, as though his words were Holy Writ. It was particularly after Israel’s sermons nowadays that Tom seemed awkward, clumsy towards her, refusing to meet her eyes, mumbling foolish answers that showed he had not really listened to what she had said. Once or twice recently when she had disagreed with Israel’s ideas Tom had seemed suffused with anger, so that his big hands shook, and she felt that he might seize her and break her back like a twig if she did not stop talking.

  It had not always been so bad. Tom was naturally proud of his strength; and sometimes it had had a quite different effect on her. One afternoon six months ago, showing off in the innocent, uncomplicated way he loved, Tom had lifted both Ann and the chair on which she was sitting onto the table in his mother’s kitchen with as much ease as though she were a kitten in a basket. She had been so overcome with amazement that when he lifted her down again she had flung her arms, laughing, around his neck; and somehow they had found themselves involved in a clumsy, earnest kiss which had awoken feelings in them which neither had quite known what to do with, at the time, but which afterwards had set Tom’s deep baritone singing his favourite psalms more lustily than for many months past.

  They had kissed again, perhaps half a dozen times in all over the past year - the last occasion being when he had asked her to marry him. But lying here quietly in the dark, it was somehow hard to picture the face that she had kissed. She had known Tom so long, she had so many memories of him, that his image was blurred in her mind as she tried to recall it. She could see the big, powerful hands, more like those of a blacksmith than a cobbler, working surprisingly quickly at the neat, precise cutting and stitching of his craft. But when she tried to picture the sturdy handsome face, framed by straight black hair, short-cropped in the old Puritan fashion, smiling up at her from the bench where he sat hunched in his father’s cobbler’s shop, her imagination failed her. She saw him stand up, awkwardly, bending his head under the rafters as he always did; and she tried to remember the slow smile above the strong, big-boned body - a smile which she knew had charmed many mothers in the village to bring their daughters’ shoes to be mended, now that Tom had taken over most of the work from his half-blind father.

  But though Ann tried, she could not quite see that smile, could not quite fix it in her mind as she lay in the dark. Was it because it had been clouded, recently, as he looked at her, waiting for her answer to his proposal; or was it because she was confusing it with the smile he had had as a child - putting the boy’s head on the man’s shoulders?

  She could remember his words clearly enough, when he had asked her to marry him. He had shyly presented her with a pair of boots he had made for her birthday.

  “Do they fit you? Are they comfortable? I made ‘em from the measure I took of your feet three weeks back. But I can change ‘em if they’re not right.”

  “They’re fine, Tom, perfect. A touch stiff, perhaps, but that’ll go ...”

  “Let me feel.” She had put her foot on a stool and his big hands had felt her feet carefully through the leather. It had always seemed strange to her, that such big hands could do such fine stitching. But it was a moment, she knew, that many village girls secretly enjoyed, having the handsome young cobbler feel their feet and ankles.

  “Aye, they feel right.” He had sat back, slightly flushed, and looked up at her. She had taken her leg off the stool and sat opposite him.

  “Ann, I ... have thought a lot about ‘ee, while I was making these. It ... can I speak to ‘ee?”

  “‘Tis what you’re doing now, isn’t it?” She was often light and flippant with him; his solemn, fumbling nature drove her to it.

  “‘Tis that ... as father says, I’m a grown man now, and do most of the work in the shop these days, more’n him, because of his eyes. And ‘tis a good business enough, you can see that.”

  “You seem to sell a lot of shoes,
surely! I can hardly get a word with you, some days, for folk coming in for orders and repairs. Specially the young maids.”

  “Yes, well. I been thinking, Ann, ‘tis not real proper for me to live at home much longer. You see, ‘tis a lot of work for mother, what with father and his eyes, and all. She and father have been saying things about how small the house is, and how ‘tis the duty of a man to start his own home, and family, and that, so I know they’m thinking of it. And I should like to have a home of my own, too, I think, now, only ... “

  She had seen clearly enough where he was leading by now; but even in the nervous flush of excitement it had raised in her, she had been unable to resist teasing him.

  “Shouldn’t you be lonely, Tom, all by yourself in a little cottage somewhere?”

  He had flushed further. “Ah, well, that’s just it, see. I been thinking that ... as you know, Ann, we been brought up from babes together, being of an age and that; and we be good friends, I believe. And as the Good Book says, ‘tis the duty of man and woman to ... to marry and bring up children ... and ... you be very well thought of in the village, Ann, do you know, and my mother do speak very well of ‘ee.”

  “Your mother, Tom? What about you?”

  “Me? Yes, well I ... I were coming to that, Ann, course I were!” She remembered now how he had looked at her, more flushed and embarrassed than before, seeing something of his mistake, at least. But then she had thought it funny, at the time. Before she had met Robert.

  “How I do feel for ‘ee, Ann, ‘tis hard to speak of, even when we’ve known each other all these years, but, well, I should like it to go on as we begun. ‘Tis a proper ... love ... I feel for ‘ee, I believe, like that of Abraham and Sarah in the Bible. I mean, I think we could become like them. If you have a will to it, that is.”

  She remembered how amused and flattered she had been, as she had smiled at his flushed, nervous face, before getting up and walking around the small shop in her new boots, to give herself time to think of an answer.

  “Tom, ‘tis truly kind of you. And I agree it does seem right; ‘twould be like when we played house in father’s stables, wouldn’t it, all those years ago! But ... it would be proper for you to ask my father, I think ... and then, we may still be a bit young, perhaps. I feel that - I need time to think, Tom, before I answer.”

  Time to think. That was what she had, now, in the silence of the night with Rachel asleep beside her. But Tom had seemed relieved and content at the time, as though the matter were said at last and settled; and she smiled up at him and kissed him. That was the last time she had kissed him, perhaps four weeks ago now.

  But kissing, she knew now, was not the same with Tom as with Robert. Although she liked to kiss Tom, it frightened her too, as it did not with Robert. Tom was so strong, so shy - she felt herself a doll in the hands of a giant, who might forget his own strength, and break her body in delight because he did not know how to play this new game they had found. And so both she and he held back; whereas with Robert ... she had never been afraid that Robert would hurt her, only that the kissing and dreaming would end.

  But she knew it had to. Robert, too, wanted to lie with her, and though she did not fear it, as she did with Tom, she feared the life it would lead to. If she left to live with him, she would never come back. Whatever happened, even if he left her in London with nothing but a little baby and her own wits, she could never come back to Colyton. Nothing, it seemed to her, could be worse than the endless pity and scorn of her friends and neighbours in the village, pointing her out to their children as a shameful example of the girl who ran away. It would be like the Hell that she had dreamt of, with the serpents forever tormenting her. Her mother and father would themselves be despised for the sin of their daughter. The very thought of it made her cheeks flush with shame in the darkness.

  So why, then, did the other vision not tempt her - that of a husband, home, and children? To marry Tom was to have all that - to move on to the next stage of her life, to become forever part of the community into which she had been born. Surely, as her father said, it was Pride to resist it, Pride to long for anything else. Nevertheless, in this brief, butterfly period of her life, when she was young and beautiful and childless, she did want more. She wanted the freedom, the laughter, the music, that she had read of in books, and that Robert had told her of.

  Rachel sighed and turned over, flinging an arm across her. “Ann? That you, Ann? Was father talking about Tom again?”

  “No. Go sleep now.” Ann lay still, hoping her sister would not really wake. She often spoke quite clearly for a few moments in her sleep, and then remembered nothing of it in the morning. But at other times she could lie awake for hours, talking in the middle of the night.

  “Tom came round to see you today. I told him you was away to get mackerel.”

  “Mmm.” Ann turned on her side with her back to Rachel, and carefully relaxed all her muscles. It was always difficult to pretend to be asleep when she was not - even though she lay still, there was often a tension in her stillness which Rachel sensed, and tonight Ann wanted to avoid her sister’s curiosity.

  Over the last few weeks she had found her sisters and baby brother increasingly irritating. Their constant demands for attention reminded her how much attention her own children would demand, if she had any, and their naive fascinated questions about whether she would marry Tom intruded into what for her was a serious and sensitive matter. And over the last few weeks she had been constantly afraid that one of them would follow her when she was going to meet Robert. But this time Rachel’s light, easy breathing continued, and Ann returned to her thoughts.

  What if Robert were a devil, sent to tempt her? She knew devils could seem fair, like Belial in the book of Paradise Lost, with his ‘honey’d, glozing lies’ - and surely this feeling, this aching of her whole body to touch him, to see him, if only once more, was like possession by a devil. She was snappish and short with her parents, inattentive, she had lied to her father this evening - were not all these the signs of possession? And if they were, should she not put the matter before God? Only He would know, He would understand.

  And so for a while, silent and motionless in her bed beside her sleeping sister, she clasped her hands together and tried to pray, while the moonlight crept another inch across the floor, and the soft night breeze blew in from the sea to rustle the curtains by the open window.

  ‘I think I love Robert now, Lord, but it may not be so. I know I should love Tom, but I cannot do it. Not now, not yet. So Lord, whatever I do is wrong now, you do see that, don’t you? If I run away with Robert it is wrong, and it is wrong too if I marry Tom, now, when I do not love him. But I must do something, Lord, or my family will soon guess I delay because of Robert, and will all hate me and despise me for that. And then if Tom comes to learn of it, he will be wretched and hate me too, so that if later I want to marry him, it will be impossible. Oh Lord, help me! What shall I do?’

  Rachel breathed silently beside her, and an owl hooted mournfully in the church tower. There was no answer.

  Or was there? As she lay waiting, the moon crept past the edge of a tree outside her window, sending a cool, clear column of light into the room. She gazed at the little silver motes of dust dancing in the moonlight, and a calm cold resolve slowly filled her mind, like a stream flowing into a pool. As she saw the beauty of the plan she clenched her fists under the covers and bit her lip to stop herself crying out with the wild, wicked daring of it. But it was not wicked - no, how could it be so, when she had asked God for an answer and this came into her mind?

  For a moment the vision of the snakes returned, but she pushed it aside. True, she would have to lie, but only she and God would know that; and she could explain it to God. But she did not know until she said it, that what she told God was a lie too.

  ‘Lord, I don’t love Robert. Not really. I only think I do and feel I do until I can think of nothing else. But really ... really I know he is like a devil within me and the right
thing to do is to love Tom - I know that, Lord. But ... just now ... just now I am so weak and possessed by this devil that I can scarcely bear to be near Tom, never mind lie with him ... but Lord, I know that I must marry him because he is a good man and that is what you want and my parents want; so I will agree to marry him if ... if only I can pretend to myself that it will never happen. Yes, this is the answer, Lord - let me pretend to this devil inside me that I’m going to run away with Robert! I know it can never happen but I’ll pretend it can and that will make it easy for me to accept Tom ... and then when one day this devil leaves me I may really love Tom and I will have done the right thing, won’t I, Lord? You’ll understand, Lord, won’t you? It’s the only way I can bear to do it - I have to tell these lies to deceive the lying devil Belial within me, who makes me feel how much I love Robert, oh how much ... you do understand that, don’t you, Lord?’

  So she argued and bargained, in her silent, labyrinthine prayers, all the time wondering whether she spoke the words of her own conscience or Belial’s. But no thunderbolt came down; only the soft sea breeze which shifted the curtain and sighed, as though it had heard it all before, and then moved on. And so at last Ann decided the Lord was convinced, and set her jaw firmly, thinking of what she would do, until finally, when the moonlight had nearly finished its journey across the floor, her brain grew tired, her jaw relaxed, and she fell into a deep sleep.

  In the morning she woke early, while the garden was loud with the dawn chorus, and went in to her parents’ bedroom in her nightgown to tell them that she would accept Tom Goodchild’s offer of marriage, so long as he could wait a little before the wedding to let her get used to the idea. Her mother wept, and then hugged her tightly; and a slow smile spread across her father’s lined, sleepy face, which stayed there as he dressed and walked whistling down the street beside his daughter, to tell Tom and his family the good news, and to ask them to a feast to celebrate the betrothal.