Mr Wroe's Virgins

by Jane Rogers

  When I open the back door I can see her light in the wash-house. And when I draw near I can see her, inside. She has a bundle of implements on the stone slab, and is binding them around and around with a length of rope. Garden tools; spade, dibber, scythe, shears. One of the washtubs is filled with an iron cooking pot, a ladle and spoon, a coil of rope, and a sack whose base bulges around its contents. After a minute she senses my presence and looks up. She does not stop her work.

  ‘What are you doing, Martha?’ I know she has heard me, but she does not reply. ‘Martha, I have been thinking. You need not fear leaving this household. I will speak to Tobias; one of the elders shall find a place for you, as a maid. You will not be returned to your father, I promise you.’

  She pulls the rope tight, knots it, and stops still looking at me.

  ‘Do you understand, Martha? You can go to someone else who will be kind to you. What are you doing with these goods?’

  ‘I am going. I will take these. To grow food and to cook.’

  ‘Martha? But where – where are you going?’

  ‘I do not tell you, Miss Hannah.’

  ‘But where will you live?’

  She pulls her bundles together into a closer pile.

  ‘Martha – you cannot just –’

  She lifts the bundle of tools, hoisting it over her shoulder, testing the weight. The rope holds them fast.

  ‘Now? Martha, are you going now?’

  She nods. ‘I come back tomorrow for the rest. And for the chickens.’

  Before I can reply she has moved past me, through the doorway, and out into the darkness.

  ‘Martha! Martha!’ Her shape is already lost in the blackness. She moves as surely as a cat.

  It is cold, standing here by the wash-house. After a while, I go back into the empty house.

  Martha

  My first life is dark. A stone. Rain falls, wind blows, sun heats. It endures, knowing nothing.

  Hannah says, ‘Tell me now, Martha. Tell the elders about it. You had to work very hard – you were so tired. Tell them what you did.’

  When I look at it it tells me nothing, it has no language.

  The old Martha sits in my belly like a stone. If she could be. If I could be. Delivered of her. I should travel the lighter for it.

  It was before this, and its length of time was greater. Its place was my father’s farm, but that was not known – the fact that it had limits in space, was not known. The place and time were not for choice, any more than a boulder on the moor can say I will move.

  It is dark, speechless. This life is its opposite. All that this life is, it was not. This life is hot sweet bright smooth gold. Has water fruit skin eyes breath dreams singing voices the flight of birds. All these were absent.

  I who was a stone am now tree and bird, I who was blind am sighted. I am a living woman.

  If I could pull that dumb weight from my entrails and heave it on to the table before them. Let them try, one by one, to lift it. Let them see its dull black, let them feel it’s harder and colder than wet slate. Delivered of it I would rise through the air like a bubble through water. Hitting heaven I would make stars.

  But how can I get it out? What wise woman knows the delivery of a great black stone? They would cry, ‘Witchcraft, the devil’s work!’ to see me brought to bed of a stone. There are no powerful herbs, no potions no prayers no conjunctions of the moon and stars, no spells which might deliver it out of me. I have never seen a devil. I know there is blackness but nothing lives in it. Not a devil if he walked and talked like a man. There’d be no harm in him, I reckon.

  I was a stone. He gave me life.

  There are no words in the dark. If I reach back from lightness to put words on the dark, I illumine it also. Where words light it, it is safer and more knowable than it was. If I cover it all in words like ivy growing and forcing its tendrils into the small cracks – I would gain a purchase to move on further across it. If I could force back into that stone-darkness a light from this time, language to speak the old bad life, would that be delivery?

  Words forced in will not show the truth of it. Because the truth of it is wordlessness. If I describe it, then it is no longer it which I am describing. It may be like: but only as like as a broken mass of weathered ivy-covered pebbles is to a bare black stone. The truth is a black stone it cannot speak.

  I knew nothing. I named nothing. To name it now, I invent.

  Invent the night. Blackness, cold. The barn. The heap of sacking where I lie, unconscious. Not sleeping, because now I know sleep has dreams, and layers. Sleep has levels and glimmerings. I lie unconscious. Invent the bark that makes me awake. The dog barks when my father puts out food. I crawl out of my den, open the barn door. There is coldness, snow. I go across the yard. I have clothes. I have an old dress bound around at middle and arms with strips of sacking. When he give me to the prophet he put me a dress of hers and clogs. I never had shoes before that day, it near broke my neck. My feet had shoes of skin.

  I cross the yard. My bowl of food is by the door, on the ground. If I do not come quick he lets the dogs have it. I crouch down to eat with my hands and mouth. I wonder why, now with words to wonder, I did not carry it back to barn and sit on milking stool to eat. Too much effort. Crouching here I know just – food, eat. Eat, food. Push food in mouth, swallow. What is it? I do not know. Maybe burned potatoes, stale bread. Scraps from their table. Cold porridge. Push it in mouth, chew, swallow. I push it all in, I lick the plate. I pick up the bucket, I go back across yard to the well. My hands on icy rope. I let the well bucket drop. As it hits water for a moment I stand upright and sleep – for the length of time it takes the bucket to float filling in water. I come awake as it’s full, heavying. I start to pull on the rope. It comes up swinging, slopping. I pour water into my bucket and heave it across the yard. I pour it into her barrel. I do this six times. On the last journey I cup my hands in the bucket and drink.

  I return to barn. The cows are inside, it is winter. I milk the cows and take milk to dairy. They fill three pails. I pour it in churn. I pour cream off yesterday’s churn into butter churn. I churn butter. I turn and turn, I am machine. On the slab I shape the butter. It is freezing, my job is easy. In summer it melts and slithers, I have to draw up new water and sluice the slab.

  When the butter is done and pails scoured with sand I turn the cheeses. Up on the ledge they are dead weight, I have to take in a breath and heave on it, held. I do not think this. Turn one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. They are bigger than my head. Then I take milk and butter to the house. He takes it off me on the step and tells me my day’s work. Stone-gathering. Before spring planting. As I stand still for a moment to be told, I sleep. I return to barn, hook a basket over each shoulder, set out on to lane. Darkness may be lifting. Invent dawn. I do not notice it. I know where I must go so my feet rise and fall on the frozen rutted ground. I am not thinking. I see nothing. At the field I start at the lane end, working across and back. Stoop, pick, drop; stoop, pick, drop. If the stone is small I can pick another in same hand. Stoop, pick pick, drop. If the stone is large I need two hands to raise it. The baskets fill. Every time I reach the wall end I empty them, making a pile. Repairing the wall comes later.

  It is not interesting to tell. Because I see nothing, feel nothing. Invent pain. Invent an ache which lies across my shoulders and sends stabbing knives down my back. Invent sore, bleeding fingers. Invent a weariness which swims up with the ground to meet me each time I stoop, and recedes sickeningly as the fall is prevented and I remain upright. I can invent these things but I do not think I knew them. The rope handles of the baskets of stones cut into my shoulders but I do not know it. So these are inventions. Just words laid across the black rock like autumn leaves, unattached, shifting with each wind.

  When field is finished I go back along the path to the farm with my baskets. I hang them in barn. Pick up shovel. Out to the turnip field. I know it is next thing to do. Invent a reason – daylight has brought a s
light thaw, the surface of ground is now slippery with a sheen of mud, softening. It will be easier to dig. I do not know this. But I go now, to dig. Thrust shovel blade into ground. Stand, heave. Beneath the surface ground is rock hard. I chip and hack them out, tearing with fingers at the frozen soil and frozen turnip, until I have filled my bucket. The cows feed. I do not eat turnip. I have lied – I have some knowledge. Like knowing to go for my morning feed before he lets the dogs have it. Although I am near to starving I know raw turnip gives belly ache. I know also the cold will keep him indoors today. Unless I anger him I am safe.

  Daylight is going now, maybe gone. Invent darkness again. When I have given cows their turnip I milk them again. Take milk to house this time. He gets it off me at door, sets down my plate. I crouch and eat. I carry water for the cows, the horse. He feeds pig himself. He thinks I would steal its food. He is right. He tells me to clean its pen before I sleep. I take shovel and bucket again. He has left a rushlight burning in the pen and pig is standing against the wall staring at me and the light. I raise shovel, sink it into the liquid mass which buries my feet. It feels soft. Invent a stench. It runs off shovel. Scoop raise slop, scoop raise slop. I do it and do it. Pig shifts round against the wall away from me. Each time the bucket is full I carry it out to kitchen garden. I stumble in the dark but I do not notice. I must not stop or fall because I would freeze where I lay. Knowing what to avoid. Seeking survival. When the pen is cleared I fetch armloads of straw from barn. Litter it down. Kill the light. Return to barn. The ground is hard with frost again, I do not look up or down, to see frozen mud or stars. I shut barn door and go to my lair. I fall into it and am unconscious. One day is over.

  Each day of this life, my new life, is different. In the old life days were the same, endlessly. Now I know sun shines, rain falls, mist hangs in air. These things may indeed have happened, changing from day to day, but I was not able to know it. My senses could not tell. Even to tell me discomfort – in August too hot, with husks of barley prickling and scratching through the sweaty layers of my rags, my whole skin red and itching from sun and dust and husks. In February soaked to the bones by a small cold driving drizzle which never stops for long enough for my rags to dry, rubbing stiffly against the sores in my armpits and at the backs of my knees where skin is broken and bleeding, each time I move. I do not feel these things. There is no difference. There is only movement (work) and being still (unconscious). I know he is dangerous, I avoid him – but unthinkingly, as I would walk round rather than into a fire. No more than that. I did not know … I did not know it was suffering.

  Only the present gives me that knowledge.

  Nor did I know (did I? No. I had no memory. I had no mastery over time.) I did not know there is past and future. I only knew the same. This new world has shown me time and dreams. Through their illumination I am able to discover specks of a life beyond – before – the drudgery.

  The first is my mother’s shoulder and arms. I am lying down. The space over me is darkened by a presence which bends low. A large hand scoops under my head and another against the small of my back. I am lifted into a warmth of body big solid firm dark and pressed against and encircled by it.

  I try to arch my neck back and glimpse her face. But I have not yet managed to do this.

  The second is the day he – my brother – died. The horse reared up – I did not look. My stepmother shouted his name and screamed ‘Get your father! Get your father!’ I ran – this is the vision – running running running across the endless field to where my father stands I gasp and point and he starts to run hard. I cannot keep up with him I watch him running fast further and further back to the house. No. No. I am stopping. Running after him then stopping. I do not want to run back now. Because I am afraid.

  What I see (I do not see my brother. I cannot find him) is the loss and terror. Here was lost – the thing which does not come back. In my earliest life I had some part of what is now. Touch taste sight time. These things belong to many lives, I understand. I may uncover more. As I have uncovered my warm mother’s arms. But my brother. I do not know what I had when I had him. What the this was I lost. I only find standing in the field, and pure terror before me like the ground falling away.

  Perhaps I will come at him one day in the dreams. Perhaps I will regrow it as I have regrown vision, hearing, all the others. I know there are things belonging to the other women which are not part of mine. I am outside something. I watch sisters Rachel and Rebekah. Or sometimes Hannah and Joanna. When they do not notice me sometimes, if they are talking. Suddenly they laugh together. Or one reaches across and pats the other’s hand. I blunder at it. A thing which means each is not guarding her own self against all. I cannot tell. If it was mine. If it will come again. Who can tell?

  What I have is riches and more to uncover. Hannah does not know, nor anyone. I have buried stores of food on the edge of the woods beyond the second field in three diggings. Besides food I have candles tinder box blankets knife shovel pan bucket and axe. Before the end I shall take more. In the woods or if I decide so, up on the edge of the moors behind Stalybridge. I shall make my shelter where no one knows. There are ruined cottages, there are stones and timbers to be had by anyone who has the strength.

  I shall have my world in freedom. No set times and tasks, no questions no rules. No start now and stop now Sister Martha. I shall have the world to stare at, to hear, to feel against my skin. To scent on the wind and taste in my mouth. I shall have days of light and nights of stars to watch in. Until I strain through that membrane which at present encases and deadens the further reaches of my senses. I have worlds, and worlds to discover.

  Hannah

  Joanna, and Mr Wroe. All night. Mr Wroe, and Joanna.

  I must have slept at last, for now when I wake it is getting light, it must be after eight o’clock. I dress myself hastily; it is bitter cold, but there is not the time to light the kitchen fire. They will be ready to start in Sanctuary at nine, and I do not know if Tobias is sending the carriage for me or if I must walk. This question is answered as I pull on my boots, for I hear the horses approaching down the lane. Leah, Rachel and Rebekah are inside.

  ‘He has been sent round to fetch us all,’ Rebekah tells me, and then asks after Martha. When I tell them she is gone and I do not know where, there is no surprise.

  And so the second day of Mr Wroe’s trial. Leah’s accusations are clear and precise; an immodest suggestion during her reading one night, an attempt to unfasten her clothes on another occasion, and lastly a rape in his room during our stay in Whitby. They have the ring of truth, to my ears. I dare say he did these things. Why, they are nothing, after his treatment of Joanna.

  Tobias conducts all the questions himself; clearly Moses will not be unleashed again. He presses her for particular detail of time and place for each event, and these are noted by the other elders. She claims also to have seen me with the Prophet, ‘in a state of undress’ one afternoon in October. She was looking through his study window. This allegation baffles me completely until I force my memory back, along the winding lanes of those sudden ups and downs of happiness and despair, back to the afternoon I am still embarrassed to recall, when he helped me with the needle in my dress. ‘Sister Hannah, do you think I have never seen a woman’s back before?’

  Rebekah and Rachel are questioned next, and both answer negatively to all questions (although Rachel at one stage breaks down into a flood of nervous tears and cannot speak at all. This despite Tobias’ gentle patience in questioning; Moses would not have got a word of sense out of her). Her testimony is interrupted by the sounds of a disturbance outside Sanctuary. She falls silent, and we listen to the muffled roar of thousands of voices, chanting in unison. Of course – it is the spinners. Albert told me of this, that on two days this week they would march through Ashton, to rally in the market place and hear speeches. They need to keep up their courage, for a few are already talking of starvation, and of returning to work. I strain to make out the words of
their chant. ‘Oor … up … ing – oor … up … ing –’ I know it. ‘Four and tuppence or swing’; the lowest wage they will accept; and which the masters have refused them. The sound of their voices warms me. I wish I were outside there with them, part of their warm comradeship and struggle; instead of in this strange white dome, where an inhuman man is being dissected alive.

  The sound moves around us and then on, a great wave breaking and rolling past our tiny island. Sanctuary walls are thick; it is the first time I have ever heard sound from outside penetrate them.

  At last, Mr Wroe is called. He stands like a hanged man, head below the outline of his hump, staring at the ground. He does not so much as glance at Tobias, or his accuser. He denies all knowledge of Joanna’s dream, and every one of Leah’s charges.

  His denials are delivered in a completely flat tone. It would appear he has no interest in the outcome of this trial. I am called back to answer Leah’s charges, which I simply deny. It is not worth explaining the needle in my dress to them. After some uncertainty about procedure we are told to leave, for the elders to consider their verdict.

  William Lees’ coachman is there to take us to our respective places; I decline a ride and elect to walk back to Southgate alone. It is cold but dry, with a scent of snow in the air. I consider whether I shall remove to Catherine’s tonight or tomorrow. I should take a leaf from Martha’s book, and clear out the offices and stores. Our housewifely skills have made enough jams, preserves and pickles, salted beans and hillocks of potatoes, to last a fair-sized establishment through the winter. I must speak with Peter, get him to send his friend the brewer round with his dray, and load it up to distribute among the spinners. This is not stealing; after all, it is the produce of the women’s labour.