Mr Wroe's Virgins

by Jane Rogers

  Everything. What have I got? Permission to keep Thomas under this roof with me. To the Prophet himself, I am still invisible; as little as dirty Martha, less than Saint Joanna. Less indeed than Hannah, who tells me that he speaks with her when she goes in to read (true, I can verify it, for she has been in there over an hour some nights. I wondered at him making her read for such a length of time). Why will he speak with her and not with me?

  It is not so much the speech, anyway. Conversation will not catch him. It is looks, it is touch. I must make him look at me again.

  I should consider some means of attracting his attention when I may catch him unawares. It is not possible to get into his bedchamber, because of Samuel in the dressing room. It is not allowed to go into his study, except at reading time – and since he shares a corridor with the kitchen, there is little chance of slipping in unobserved. Therefore only if one catches him in the corridor, or on the stairs, might one … What? What, if he is blind deaf and dumb to my presence?

  Patience will be rewarded. This evening I left my door ajar, once Thomas was settled, and listened to the household going to bed. Hannah and Saint Joanna were the last of the women to ascend, closely followed by Samuel, who went into his room next the Prophet’s. This left only Mr Wroe downstairs. About an hour later I heard him open and close his study door. I was wearing my nightgown, unbuttoned at the breast: throwing off the blanket I had wrapped myself in, and taking Thomas’s little cup, I set out barefoot on to the landing, moving silently and judging my step so as to suddenly come out to the top of the stairs just as he was reaching the last step. He was holding his candle up before him, and a little away from himself, looking down at his feet on the stairs; even if he had looked up to see me at the top, the flame would have blinded him. It was the easiest thing in the world to brush against him and catch hold of him to save us both from tumbling down. I fell back against the wall and he, losing his balance as I intended, stumbled against me. His candle, which he kept held up above his head, dipped but did not go out, and several drips of hot wax fell direct on to my face and neck. I had not forseen this (expecting, rather, that the candle might go out and leave us in welcome darkness) and I gasped at the pain.

  ‘Sister Leah! I did not see you. Are you hurt?’

  ‘No – that is – your candle! I am burned.’

  ‘Where? Let me see. I am very sorry –’ He lowered the candle and peered into my face, as I peeled off a strip of wax from my cheek.

  ‘What are you –?’

  ‘I forgot Thomas’s milk – I was in bed then I remembered –’

  ‘Did you not see me coming up the stairs?’ He remained very close to me; so close I could feel his hot breath upon my neck as he spoke.

  ‘No. I – I must have been half-asleep. I have dropped the child’s cup somewhere about –’ He stepped back and we both spotted the cup together, and bent to get it. As I leant forward the unbuttoned top of my nightgown fell open, revealing my breasts to anyone who might be standing a little above, and quite close to me. As he was. Slowly, I closed my hand over the child’s cup, and slowly straightened up. He was watching me. Standing quite still, holding the candle to one side so it should not dazzle us. I stood and waited.

  I cannot tell how long we stood there, in perfect silence; he holding his candle, I holding the little cup. I know the same thought was in both our heads. I could hear his breathing. He was watching me, his lips a little parted, his eyes steady. I watched him, watching me.

  At last, by an extreme effort of will, he abruptly turned his head and moved – rather staggered – toward his bedchamber door. I hesitated, to see if he would say good-night. But he did not speak, so I started to go downstairs. When I reached the bottom I realized he may not have noticed that I came down, and so could not even consider following me. I wished I had moved before he forced himself to turn away. If I had said, ‘I am going down to the kitchen for the child’s milk,’ he could quite easily have followed – indeed, it would have been only courteous to light my way. Of course he could do nothing, make no move, there at the top of the stairs, where any member of the household might have opened their door upon us. But down in the kitchen, with the glowing embers in the grate, and none nearby to spy on us …

  I crouched before the last warmth of the fire, hugging my arms across my chest – glad in the certainty that he desires me, and only impatient that I had not thought quick enough to bring it to a more satisfactory stage.

  *

  There has been a stream of visitors to see the Prophet: three of them yesterday in fine elegant carriages. The great hall is continually thronged with people seeking an audience. My chores yesterday included sweeping and dusting his room, and polishing his table and bureau with beeswax. Examining the top drawer of his bureau, I found a small handwritten volume, which is his journal. Not knowing when he might return, my perusal was necessarily hurried; for the most part, it seems to contain instructions from God and thunderous threats concerning the end of the world. My attention was caught by this passage, though –

  In my vision I saw a most beautiful woman. Her breasts appeared as if suck were in them; at the ends they resembled a rose. Her body was small, and her two thighs appeared as the thickness of her body. I tried to reach her …

  Turning the page in guilty haste, I discovered this lady to be none other than ‘Mother Eve’, who has given suck to mankind and is now to be a bride for God. Is this in the Elders’ religion? ‘At the ends they resembled a rose.’ How his imagination dwells on that pretty detail!

  I replaced the book and lingered as long as I dared; finally, when he still did not return, I untied my rule book and dropped it behind his chair. Hearing at dinner time that he was back, I went and knocked before afternoon duties began. He called me to enter: but as ill luck would have it, two of the Elders, Tobias and Caleb, were closeted with him. I had thought he was alone. So I was forced to waste my good excuse, and have my rule book spotted and returned to me by Elder Tobias. But I kept my eyes on the Prophet during this, enough to note that he watched me every minute. He did not smile; I think he did not even speak to me, beyond a nod. But he looked, long and steady.

  If I had the ordering of this house it should not be so meanly done as now. It would be possible to present a much grander face to the world, with very little extra expenditure. The employment of seven women, for example, is an entirely false economy – for although we are unpaid, yet there is the feeding, housing, warming and clothing of us to consider. There is no great domestic skill in any of the other six; I honestly believe that I alone plus a skilled cook and a good handy maid, could achieve better results. Extra help would be needed for laundry – and of course, the women would be required for church duties, singing, punishments and cleaning: but women living at the homes (and expense) of their parents or husbands could perform these tasks, since they take no more than a couple of hours a day, and the Sabbath when they would anyway be in Sanctuary.

  Without this clutter of women about the place the Prophet might make more use of the elegant parts of the house: receive his visitors in the drawing room, or invite them to stay to dinner. And no one would suffer the shock and disgust of suddenly coming upon Martha snoring, or staring in a trance – or Dinah hobbling about at tasks she cannot hope to perform successfully. Nor would I have the perpetual annoyance of Saint Joanna’s doting upon Thomas. I know it cannot be long now before I win the Prophet’s ear: it is only that the time and space available in this household are so terribly limited. I know he wants me. The question is, when will he have the courage (and when can I make the opportunity for him?) to make his move?

  The minutes, the hours, the days go by. My child is growing teeth. It is past the midpoint of summer. If I had known or thought when I elected to enter this household, how miserably slowly my desires might be accomplished – I am sure I would have stayed at home. There is no late-night entertainment now, for John is gone to Devon; I have no occasion to wear my muslin dress. I dare not precisely
repeat my stairs encounter with Mr Wroe, and he has not noticed any less obvious move. Three nights running now I have gone down to the kitchen after going to bed, pretending to fetch milk for Thomas, and lingered there near the fire until I heard him come out from his study. But though I left the kitchen door open, and last night began to sing a hymn when he opened his door, he did not so much as peer in – only went straight upstairs to his room.

  When he preaches he seems almost to be alight. And when he looks down into the congregation then, his eye invariably seeks me out. His heat and force are like a blast from a furnace. I am not nothing to him; I know I am not, I know it.

  Saint Joanna’s behaviour with Thomas is more provoking than I can say. During the daytime, he is generally in the cradle in the big kitchen, and whoever is busy there looks to him when he cries. But Saint Joanna has no scruples about snatching him from his cot when he is in the deepest and most peaceful slumber. Clasping him to her bosom she recites great chunks of the Bible to the poor bewildered little creature. I bite back my angry words, but once she has disturbed him in this way he does not settle easily to sleep again, and has spent much of the past few days in fretful, sleepy mewling. She seems incapable of leaving him in peace.

  Today I made it my business to stay in and about the kitchen most of the day, in order to keep her in check. She seems to live in a world of her own, less and less able to act with common sense, or to know quickly what is to be done. Each small decision sets her dithering and wondering, and casting about for omens. She will look for a sign in the smallest detail; a spilt cup of tea, the shape of a passing cloud. The other evening, when I was upstairs with Rachel and Rebekah, Rebekah pretended to be Saint Joanna in the garden, mourning over the early dropping of unripe apples; ‘Alas, and woe, it is a terrible sign, this early falling denotes a fall from grace, premature death and an early grave! It may also betoken the end of the world!’ We laughed, but from what I have seen and heard of Saint Joanna today, Rebekah’s mocking speech might have been in deadly earnest.

  We had swept and scrubbed the floors in the offices, and were about new-sanding them. She two or three times paused to take a good long stare out of the windows.

  ‘Is there someone coming?’ I asked her (in full expectation of a band of resurrected martyrs, or the riders of the apocalypse at least).

  ‘There are some birds,’ says she.

  I had not set her down for an admirer of nature. ‘Are you fond of birds, Sister Joanna?’

  She did not turn her face from the window. ‘It is a sign.’

  Glancing out, I caught sight of two dusty grey fledglings hopping about on the path. ‘Of what, sister?’

  She watched in silence (leaving me to the task of lining and patterning the sand, which I in any case perform more neatly and evenly than she; it is a well laid floor, more flat than ours at home, and looks well new-sanded). At length she turns back to the room and says, ‘It is a sign relating to us. As the birds have made this house their home – they were reared in a nest above the wash-house door there – so have we. As they grow and try their wings, so shall we grow in faith and good works, and as they take off and fly away, so shall we gain the power and inspiration to work as God’s missionaries in this world.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I have watched their parents feed and tend them this past week, as assiduously as God himself tends to the spiritual needs of his children. And today they are trying their wings.’

  ‘It is a sign for us, you say.’

  ‘For us females – the seven of us.’

  ‘And are there seven birds?’

  ‘I cannot be sure. I have counted no more than five, but it is no great matter, five or seven.’

  We replaced the funiture and went out to join the others, who had already made a start on the chickens. We have Elder Tobias to thank for this: hearing old Buckley’s wife was sick, he gives her his usual deathbed visitation, telling her to lighten her soul by relinquishing worldly goods. The upshot is, before she’s cold in the ground, Old Buckley has sent his boy down to know if we will have her flock of chickens alive or dead. There are enough chickens here to keep us in eggs, and since the house is sorely lacking in pillows and bolsters it was decided we should pluck the lot for feathers and down, and prepare the flesh for the Feast of the New Moon on Wednesday. They have hung them from hooks on the wash-house outer wall, and all save Dinah are at work now plucking. Martha, as usual, stands gormless, too hamfisted for such work: and Madam Hannah is a stranger to it, I see, tugging at feathers one by one with awkward finger tips – while Rebekah and Rachel beside her take the feathers in rows between flying thumbs and index fingers, and seem to peel the flesh bare as I watch.

  Joanna and I take our places among them: the air is thick with choking down and that filthy stink of chickens. They have taken off their heads to let them bleed, thus removing part of the natural amusement of plucking – for ours at home always have their necks wrung, and dangle and jiggle quite delightfully as one plucks. I remember Anne and I in hysterics one time over the resemblance to a man’s you know what, and my mother scolding us ‘For shame! for shame!’ till she suddenly burst out herself, and laughed till we were quite afraid.

  Saint Joanna is no great plucker either, I see, nor is the work one scrap to her taste. After a few minutes she leaves her post and vanishes around the corner.

  ‘Are they flying?’ I ask, on her return.

  ‘There is one that cannot get back on the roof. I fear it has jumped too soon.’

  ‘What does it signify if they cannot fly away?’ She tugs at a handful of feathers, not sharply enough to loosen them: they break in her fingers. I hope I shall not be lumbered with the tidying of her birds.

  ‘It may signify a failing … I cannot tell.’

  After a while the down and dust set me sneezing violently, and I go in to check on Thomas. He is sleeping sweetly, I am glad to say. Glancing out of the window, what should I see but a cat. A big ginger creature, lying full stretched out and a dreamy look in his eyes. On the other side of the path to him sits one of Joanna’s birds. After a moment the stupid bird begins to hop and flutter: the cat lies still, only the end of his tail’s raised up and sways a little – just a little, side to side. Suddenly there’s a clatter and scatter of noise up above, and the cat and I look up to see the parent birds on the wash-house roof, going hammer and tongs, and four fat birdlings in a row beside them, all teetering on the edge. Well the cat looks up and the cat looks down, and then he makes a move. He strolls over to the stupid feathery ball, and sits by it. And he puts out a paw – and he knocks it over. Oh the squawking and the clattering from the adult birds, and the hopping and the scuttling from little idiot on the ground. He’s making such a to do now he’s ruffled the cat’s temper. The cat lets him get so far, and then he pounces: takes him in his mouth and gives him a good shake. Squealing and fluttering and dragging a wing the nasty little creature reels about the path, and the cat gives him a pat here – a cuff there – a playful dab on the head, buffeting him back and forth between his paws. The parents, having reached a climax of squawking, make their first big mistake.

  For they fly down. They fly down and flutter above the cat’s head, hoping maybe to distract him – in which they succeed, for he leaps up after them, leaving the twitching bundle of feathers (already stale, in comparison to a healthy, flying bird) on the path. However, their other four little ones, in idiotic fright at the racket, leap after the parents. Being incapable of hovering, they land fair and square in the cat’s way. That cat must have thought it was raining birds. Just then Saint Joanna comes into the kitchen. I wait for her to cry out and rail against the cat, but she does not speak: only leans against the wall staring out at them, while the cat runs this way and that, administering a blow here and a cuff there, killing none yet but buffeting them into a hopping dance, while the parents clatter and shriek overhead. The cat leaps; he stalks; he prances; a most beautiful creature in action.

  ‘Will you
not save them?’ I ask Joanna.

  ‘I cannot change their destiny.’ She is crying.

  ‘They are only birds,’ I tell her, for she could not be more distressed if they were infants.

  When the fledglings could no longer run, but were reduced to scrabbling heaps on the path, with the poor cat obliged to toss them in the air to give himself the satisfaction of catching them again, Hannah suddenly walked out around the corner of the wash-house. The cat vanished, with one of his victims in his mouth: Hannah surveyed the scene. Then she turned back into the wash-house and returned with a bucket into which she dropped three of the four. The fourth she set on its legs and it ran a few steps before pitching on to its side. We watched her examine it, then toss it into the bucket with the others, and head for the pump. She filled the bucket and stood staring into it for a moment, then fetched herself a stick with which she poked the contents. Saint Joanna, whiter than a ghost, went upstairs. Hannah, looking up from her work, caught my eye through the window and frowned. I returned to my plucking.

  ‘Were you watching that cat, Leah?’

  ‘You took his sport away, Sister Hannah. And only to kill them yourself.’

  ‘There was no need to prolong their suffering.’

  She recommenced her incompetent plucking. As with the sewing, the bulk of the work falls to those of us who know how best to perform it.