Mr Wroe's Virgins

by Jane Rogers

  The Prophet is assailable. He is not all Godliness. There are chinks in his armour, and I have seen them. He will not be able to pretend I am not there. Or that I am merely one of the women. He must see me. Me. Leah.

  When I arrived back with Thomas there was a tremendous fuss, and he was passed round from one pair of arms to another till he was peevish and exhausted. I set some milk to warm for him, but Saint Joanna seized him and carried him off, along with the note, to see the Prophet and find out what must be done. I had been thinking all day over where he should sleep, so I set about clearing a corner of the spare bedchamber, and removing my own bedding to that room. I took out the bottom drawer from the chest there, which will make a good crib for the present, and when Saint Joanna came up puzzling over where he should be placed, I was able to cut her short. I have presented it that I am but a poor sleeper and so will not suffer unduly if he cries in the night: and it must make sense to all, that he should be in a room where he will waken only one. It was getting late and she had no immediate counter-proposal, so it was arranged as I wished. I could see the reluctance with which she passed him back to me though; she seems to dote on him already.

  Hannah

  Sitting in the dark. The other woman, Joanna, brings her candle when she comes in. She reads, prays, undresses by it.

  ‘Will you pray with me, sister? Are you in trouble? Can I ease your burden?’ She puts her hand on my arm.

  My eyes are dry now, she does not touch me. ‘Please leave me alone.’

  She hesitates for a minute, then, ‘I will pray for you.’

  When she is in bed, and hidden by the hangings, the candle still burns. She has left it on the washstand for me. I move across and snuff it out. The pale shape of the window blooms in blackness. It is cold. I wrap my blanket around my shoulders, and resume my seat by the window.

  Sitting in the dark. I sat with my father each night throughout his sickness. Now I sit on my own.

  In darkness, not in candlelight. Our landlady, Lily, coming in early one morning said, ‘You did not make a light? Are you not afraid, sitting by him in the darkness all night?’ I was busy measuring his laudanum, sixty-five drops. I did not trouble myself to answer her.

  Afraid of what? His death? A light will not stop it.

  Looking out of our window at night, I see the lights in our neighbours’ houses. The baker opposite puts up his shutters; but at either side of him, the small windows are uncovered, and as darkness falls one may see the flickering glow of firelight, or candle or lamp within. Sometimes a candle is set on the window-ledge. The little flimsy light against a world of darkness: what is it but an invitation? Here, it says, here I am, see my frailty, see how easy I may be extinguished. A breath of air, the touch of a finger and thumb will do it. And even if you leave me, at the last I shall put myself out, guttering and flickering to death amongst my own shapeless melted remains. As those who live out their natural life span must go at the end, spread huge with dropsy or eaten to the skeleton wick by wasting. Better to show no light, than to clutch at the false comfort of a candle.

  This darkness is peaceful, quieter even than at my uncle’s. I can hear Joanna’s light, even breaths. Nothing, outside; it is quite still. We are well removed from any thoroughfare or neighbour, and separate even from the canal (which divides us from the town) by the length of a dark field. Night silence.

  The silence of my father’s nights was ripped by his cough.

  While his coughing spasm lasts, every part of my being urges it to end, knows that silence at any price would be less terrible than such extremity. It is no longer a human sound, it tears out of wounded flesh, unconscious of the damage it inflicts as it erupts; no longer in any degree controlled. It brings with it, sometimes blood, sometimes bile. I wipe him, my mind and body knotted tight with willing it to end. And then when – suddenly, without the measured subsiding or throat-clearing of a waking man’s cough – it ceases, on a shriek or bark or rasp of unfinished pain; then the other fear hits me; that he is really silenced. The sweating horror of that sound; the freezing fear of that silence. These two measure out the length of an interminable night. In one of his silences there are voices in the street, two men calling good-night. Out there, where darkness contains a warm bed, sleep, renewal. Here it is endurance, through the sound, to the silence; through the silence, to the sound. The darkness does not vary, the sky is black now. And now. And still. Dawn comes at forty minutes after five o’clock. When I hear the church bell toll five, I tell myself the night was quick, I only imagined it lasted so long. There is still no change, no lightening. Darkness is a substance – like a mushroom – growing with the night, spreading to fill all cracks and spaces, pressing in at eyes and ears to suffocate each living body. His retching cries are the sound of human resistance to smothering death.

  He falls silent. Into the fragile quiet, the noise of a bird. One bird, coming into existence; making one note. A brief sweet sound. Silence. The note repeats. Encouraged now by its own sound, it tries another – two notes. A call, waiting to be answered. Oh thank God for the single noise that leads to the double noise that leads to the answering call and then to the repetition; the duet, the chorus, and dawn.

  But while this hope is still before me, at the sound of that one little voice with its down-up call, and my unreliable eyes are still inventing me a lightening in the darkness of the sky – comes his next dreadful racking gasping cough, so prolonged and violent that I cannot believe it will not be the end. When at last it finishes, there are a half-dozen birds testing their strength outside, and a perceptible greyness at the window. But they are no use. I am already accustomed to dawn, its relief is consumed and stale. I move to the window to watch darkness sifting from the air outside, to see the still cold grey world revealed again; waiting and fearing, waiting and fearing, the recommencement of his sound. But when it comes again –

  Hush. Hush. It is done. This night is quiet. Hush and listen to these light soft breaths.

  *

  The prophet summoned us to the dining room at midday today, to tell us (as I suspected) that we are to be domestics. The bulk of our duties are housewifely. In Sanctuary we are to be responsible for the polishing of silver and brass, the trimming and setting forth of candles, the laundering of ephods, surplices and altar linen. He also requires us for reading and singing. Neither Martha nor Dinah can read, and Rachel and Rebekah made such a flurry of ‘we are afraid’ and ‘only to spell it out slowly’ that they were also exempted. In Sanctuary and in missionary work, we are to perform a ceremonial role, and to collect the signatures of the newly converted for the church rolls. Of all the directions, I find this reference to missionary work the most disturbing, for I can imagine little more ludicrous than the sight of such an ill assorted troupe, decked out in white, processing down the street of some Pennine town to the halting sounds of our own voices, behind a long-haired bandy-legged little hunchback.

  He cuts a strange figure. Everywhere he goes he carries an iron rod, for all the world like some outlandish native with a spear. He wears his hat rammed down upon his brow no matter what the company, and stares at one with such a piercing eye that one is embarrassed for him, and turns one’s eyes away. His mouth is almost hidden by his long beard, so that when he opens it in speaking, and you get a sudden glimpse of that pink hole, it is obscene. His voice I grant to be fine; deep and resonant. Perhaps the depth his hunch adds to his chest has given greater space for resonance, just as a greater girth of bell makes a deeper, more sonorous note.

  But for a prophet: a man of God: a leader? I am at a loss. Nor can I determine to what degree he play-acts. I am sure he is a charlatan, but, I suspect, an unknowing one. That is to say, he is a simple soul who believes (deludedly) that he is chosen of God. There is too much awkwardness and nervousness about him for an out-and-out rogue: although he is clearly clever, and used to twisting people to his will. ‘Be it menial or trivial, ye do it for the Lord’ – sound advice for household drudges, equal in cl
everness to the economical suggestion that our reward for such labours shall be in heaven (at God’s expense) rather than on earth at his own.

  Anyone else but Joanna would be tired by the evening, after the routine and responsibility of the day: after a couple of unrewarding hours spent teaching Martha; after the squabble between two families waiting in the great hall to see the prophet (who is not here today, but they will not take Joanna’s word for it, and insist on waiting all afternoon); after lengthy and difficult negotiations with the cobbler over footwear for the seven women, and how great a portion of the work he might see his way to donating to the cause; after cooking dinner single-handed (for Dinah is no real help); and after rescuing that dreadfully screaming baby from Leah, who insists on keeping it in her chamber but affects not to hear it when it cries of an evening. Joanna has sung it lullabies from eight till nine o’clock. After such a day anyone else but Joanna would be too tired to come in and tell me again that she wishes to share my trouble, and that God makes her heart grieve for her sorrowing sister.

  ‘Thank you sister. I am comfortable, I prefer to sit here by the window. If I go to bed, I will not sleep.’

  ‘You are grieving for your father?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘When did he die?’ She sits on the end of my bed, facing me, brushing out her long straight hair as she talks.

  ‘In the winter. He died … in January.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘No. I have no mother. She died when I was a child.’

  ‘No brothers or sisters?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘You are like me, sister.’ She smiles. ‘I was brought up at the house of my aunt. But God has brought us into a household of many sisters, now.’

  I do not reply. Laying down the brush, she separates her hair into three parts, and begins to plait it neatly for the night.

  ‘You lived alone with your father then.’

  ‘Yes. I – I nursed him in his final illness.’

  ‘What kind of man was he, sister?’

  ‘An engraver, by trade.’ I cast about for something else to say to her. ‘He had great faith – not dissimilar to the beliefs of your church.’

  ‘Then I am sure he is with God.’

  There is a silence. She sits, staring at me, as if she expects an answer. I have nothing to say about God, I do not think he is anywhere but rotting in the ground.

  ‘He was not ready to die.’

  She considers this, turning over her hairbrush between her hands. ‘You are not able to let him go. Why?’

  She is the one who started this conversation. How I hate the smugness religion confers upon its adherents. Now I shall be lectured on how to accept death. After a while she stands up. ‘May I brush your hair for you? I used to brush my aunt’s, at home, before our night-time prayers.’ She comes and stands beside me and begins to unpin my cap and loosen the hair. She has a gentle touch. For a while she brushes in silence.

  ‘Did he give you your education?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you helped him in his work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must have been very close.’

  ‘At one time. Not at the time of his death.’ Let her chew on that.

  ‘You had an argument?’

  ‘Not exactly. Thank you for brushing my hair, Sister Joanna. I can plait it myself.’

  She arranges her clothes and kneels down beside her bed.

  ‘Will you pray with me, Sister Hannah?’

  ‘Thank you. No.’

  Though we work hard here, we have our rest times and our privacy. There is as much food as I can eat, and a daily increasing supply of clothing. I have a sense, now, of space around me: the brittle urgency of choices with which every day seemed to present me, from my father’s death up till this time, has somewhat retreated. There is a kind of calm. At my aunt’s each day’s crazed pattern was no one’s invention but her own, each task no more than half-started before her bleating complaints cut it short. Daily at my aunt’s house I faced the brick wall of that column in the Manchester Guardian: ‘WANTED, by a young lady, a SITUATION as GOVERNESS in a family or ASSISTANT in a SCHOOL …’ Each day the wanted column gives notices of PERSONS wanted – a good plain cook, a coachman, a clerk. The only persons who must offer themselves as WANTING a position, are the educated females.

  The Israelites’ music is beautiful. I was reminded of going with Father to hear Haydn’s Nelson Mass, and finding tears streaming down my face. My father’s kindly puzzlement at my state, smiling at me indulgently, patting my arm, telling me he should bring me to the Chamber music next time, which might excite me less. (He patted my arm. Smiled at me. He was my father.)

  Here in the Sanctuary greatest space is allocated to the musicians. The instrumentalists sit in the left-hand gallery, the choir in the right: opposite and facing them, stands the great organ. Their instruments are outlandish; bizarrely shaped brass and silver tubes from which perhaps our present day trumpet and french horn may be descended; goatskin-covered rounds they beat with their fingers or small hammers; chimes, bells, wind instruments with a sound so hauntingly plaintive a stone would melt to hear it – the sound of the lost world, of Eden, calling in everlasting sorrow for what is spoiled.

  There are others. I cannot name them, but Joanna has told me they are built up from names and types of instruments in the Bible, and also copied from the instruments of the Jewish and Gypsy peoples. The quality of sound is extraordinary, for it has a depth and a texture to it which ravishes the hearing. As I sing with them, I am transported to their belief, into the magical world we all desire;

  Behold the wonders now appear

  Which in the Revelation stand;

  To show to man the end is near;

  And his redemption is at hand!

  The woman, with the Sun array’d,

  Treads down the moon beneath her feet!

  On her Jehovah’s pow’r’s displayed,

  She brings to man the light complete.

  She brings the fruit pronounced good,

  The evil fruit she casts away;

  And all who eat of this sweet food,

  Will live in one eternal day!

  One of my duties is teaching Dinah to read. She will guess at each word before she properly reads it, as if the letters on the page were a sign for meaning, rather than spelling out the thing itself. Thus she is convinced that any word beginning with the letter S is evil, thanks to Satan, Serpent and Sin. It appears that the whole world is little more than a system of hieroglyphs to her; each corporeal, tangible object nothing but a signification of some more potent ulterior reality. Writing thus becomes a system of symbols signifying symbols; for as A stands for Apple, so Apple stands for Temptation and the Fall; and thus the simplest and most innocent A-word (Ant, Abacus, After) is tainted. To begin with, of course, she does not think of the innocents; when her eye falls upon the letter A she reads, first Apple, then whatever she can think of that is close; Agony, Affliction, Anger, Angel (weeping, fallen).

  Over the days, I have uncovered her history. She suffers a good deal of pain in her bent legs, and also has a persistent, almost barking cough. Her household duties are consequently lightened, but she is so afraid of being thought a nuisance that she often courts exhaustion by taking on extra tasks for which she is quite unfitted. Religion is everything to her: compensates her for her pain, her physical incapacity, and the seemingly loveless life she has led. She has been an operative in one of the local cotton mills since childhood, until her ill health and deformity (caused by that work) made her unsuitable for the labour. For the past year she has remained at home, keeping house for her mother, brother and sisters. Without her precisely saying so, it is clear that they begrudged her her keep, once she was no longer a wage-earner. Her father died of the spinners’ cancer, when she was very young. She sees her inclusion into the prophet’s household as God’s answer to her prayers. Her single fear is that the prophet may send he
r home, if her health deteriorates to the point where she can render no useful service.

  We women whom no one wants …

  And then I look at Martha. Indeed, she seems to haunt us all, for you will come upon her where you least expect her, standing quite still and silent. The dead crow a farmer hangs out, to frighten off the others …

  I cannot conquer that revulsion. Joanna’s kindliness reproaches me. But I do not want to touch her.

  *

  I am capable of performing all the duties so far assigned to me in this house; but there must surely come a time when my ignorance of the Israelite faith might present difficulties? I judged it wise to raise this subject with the prophet one night after his reading.

  ‘Mr Wroe, I think you should know I am not a member of your faith. My aunt and uncle are members of your meeting, but I myself have never attended –’

  ‘I know this, Sister Hannah.’

  I was surprised he even knew my name.

  ‘I – if there are spiritual duties belonging to the office of the seven virgins – I am concerned that I may be unable –’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as?’ I repeated stupidly.

  ‘Spiritual duties, such as?’

  ‘I do not know, sir.’

  ‘The duties are those I indicated the other morning. Domestic duties: together with singing in Sanctuary, reading to me, and accompanying missionary tours.’

  ‘Missionary tours? I am ignorant of even the rudiments of your faith.’

  ‘You are a Christian?’

  I was at a loss how to answer this: there was an edge of impatience in his voice, as if he thought I had raised this trifling subject only to vex him. After a while he repeated his question.