After the Storm

by Margaret Graham

  ‘Then they’d have to lump it. Look at Sarah, why should she be paid less for doing her job than a man would? She has to keep a house. If I don’t marry, I would have to. It’s not fair, is it, Sarah? Surely you can see that Tom.’

  His face was thoughtful and she could see that he was trying to sort it out. ‘You can’t be a socialist and not care about the women too,’ she insisted, and listened as the talk swirled round the room again and soon the scones were finished and the cakes too.

  Then he nodded. ‘You’re right. Of course you’re right. We’ll make the women equal.’

  And he took a cup of warm tea from Sarah and gulped it down, his mind busy, and Annie was thinking that she would find Georgie and bring him back. They could go to the Lancashire mills for the cotton. Then Don said, ‘You’d need to go to Art College, wouldn’t you?’

  The words cut across the excitement, the thoughts of the future, and the dreams disappeared, but then Sarah said, ‘That’s no problem. I will fund the Art College training.’ Annie looked up at her and Tom spun round. His face had fallen into hopelessness but now was alight with hope. He looked at Annie, then back at Sarah. She leant forward and switched her table lamp on and it threw the light on to her face and showed her enthusiasm.

  ‘Oh, so it’s a paintbrush you need, to get anything round here, is it?’ Don sneered. His eyes were on his cup and Sarah kept her face still as she turned it to him in the hush that had fallen again. Annie felt the sweat break out as she heard his words.

  ‘No, Don, you do not need a paintbrush. I was intending of course to give you the same start as I would give Tom. In that way, all three of you will be equal.’ Her voice was carefully expressionless and Annie flushed with shame for her brother and despair for herself.

  Sarah rose. ‘Come with me now to the study. I’ll sort something out for you now. It might make the partnership you speak of with Albert that much more businesslike.’ She smiled at Annie. ‘It will be two years at least before Tom is able to go to College and we have plenty of time to sort his affairs out.’

  Annie sat on as they left the room. Val and Tom cleared the tea things and rattled them out on the trolley and tray. The fire flickered lower and she did not think to replenish the logs. It was right of course that Don should have the same from Sarah as she had had, but now her task would be to find the money to repay her guardian for all that she was to give to her brothers or there would be no freedom for her. It would be like Betsy all over again.

  Later, long after they had left and she was in bed, with Georgie’s card in her hand, held against her body, she cried for him, wept for his strength. Georgie was her rock, the only one stronger than her. He had taught her, loved her, shown her a world that she had not known existed. Taken her by the hand to see the marsh marigold, the rowan berries ripening in late August. Made her look beyond her mere existence; to push thoughts from her head so that they did not absorb her energies, to enjoy the moment. What was it he had said? Push those black memories away, they don’t have to stay inside your skull unless you want ’em to.

  She needed him, needed his body, needed his strength that had steadied her and then coaxed heights of passion from her. She knew he would be back, but only when he had brought himself up to the level that Sarah had determined for Annie. Only then, when he could match her, not need to take from her, would he be back. That was the love she missed, the love of someone she did not feel responsible for.

  Don’s whispered request, as he left, made her writhe again; the feel of her da’s watch as she had given it back to him, as he had asked, made her feel a repeat of the anger she had felt.

  It wouldn’t get nicked from Albert’s, he had said, pocketing the watch, so there was no longer any need for her to hang on to it, and now she forced the anger she felt away from him across to her da because it was a watch he should still have been wearing but he had killed himself, hadn’t he. He would not make her angry at her brother for something which was his fault and she cried again as she tried to push the black memories back into the box, but it was too late now, they were out again and she wondered if they would ever give her any peace and go away completely.

  CHAPTER 15

  The marigolds were growing spindly in the beds and their bulging green seeds pulled the long stems down into the path; their acrid smell would be stronger as the sun rose. Annie dead-headed them as she went past, then segmented one in her pocket using her thumbnail and, pushing her bike, bumped down the steps through the gate and out into the road.

  She was early for school today, deliberately so, and she did not ride the bike but pushed it along until she reached the lamp-post beyond the Miss Thoms; then she propped it up by the kerb and leant against the street lamp, unfolding Georgie’s letter which she had already read twice since it had arrived after breakfast.

  Here, on the pavement, with people walking past and lorries braking and revving as they came round the corner she reread every word, slowly savouring the shapes and lines, seeing in them his face as he bent over the paper, his hands as they fashioned these words, hearing his voice, even though he was so far away. It was two years since she had seen him. Two years since she had left Wassingham.

  April 1931

  My dearest Annie,

  I never thought I would be writing to you from the North West frontier of India when I last wrote. It will take a good few months for this to reach you because letters from here travel by foot, mule, train before they reach the sea. Is your summer nearly over?

  I am hunched round the fire with the snow falling all around. It is freezing hard and we have been marching all day in the column out from the fort to keep an eye on the Pathans. These are mountain people who enjoy a bit of fisticuffs between themselves and the odd raid into the lower farmlands. We are supposed to keep them in order. Some hope!

  They like our guns so will be trying to take them fairly soon but they won’t be successful.

  We are also here to check the passes and make sure that Russia is not about to invade India but the officer here says that the bolshies are probably too busy with their own problems to be starting any nonsense like that. I expect Tom could tell us all what he means by that.

  I’m a lance-corporal now which isn’t bad for 19. I got me first stripe soon after we landed in India, so have just helped our lads to build a stone wall, which is called a sangar out here, before reporting to the sergeant. He’s set up a machine-gun inside it and of course ourselves.

  The hill we have climbed today is rather higher than the one we used to race up to get to Bell’s Farm and you would need all the vests you could find to survive. I can’t see you climbing in our gear. The brown woollen shirts would prickle you to death and on top of that the jerseys scratch through them. Our shorts go as far as our knees and the footless hosetops, socks, puttees and the boots would drive you mad, they’re so tight.

  We sleep out in the open, though some sit up round the fires, preferring the warmth to a good night’s kip. I don’t mind it too much, Wassingham could be pretty bad – remember? But if I were here with you neither of us would notice the snow, even if it fell for a million years. I’ve missed you so, my bonny lass, my darling. I think of you every night, every day. Think of you with Val and Sarah, think of you sitting on your wall with Jenn and Sandy. Think of you lying in bed and I want you so much it hurts. I can picture your friends but wonder how wrong I am. It must be grand to have a break from the hard graft of life and you must enjoy it, you must try not to spoil it by worry over the boys or missing me.

  Tom is right, you know, when he says that Don is asking for trouble with his money-lending. His interest rates are far too high from what Tom says when he writes, but he’ll talk some sense into the man so don’t let it get to you. The idea of your own business still seems to excite Tom and at least it will get your bonny lad out of the pits won’t it, which is what you want more than anything, isn’t it?

  I wonder, though, whether the business is what you really want. You sound so in
terested in your work at the hospital but Sarah’s right to say it’s too much for you. Little hinny, you must take care. Don’t work your guts out just to pay her back for Don’s money. She doesn’t want it and even if you feel you must make it up to her there’s all the time in the world to do it.

  You mustn’t worry about me out here either. We are really sent out from the fort to push off boredom and it is just a bit of a ramble so you can imagine that it suits me grand. The hills are covered with the holly-oak scrub with leaves that barely rot when they fall, so we march through inches of them. Their acorns don’t ripen for eighteen months either so new growth is slow here. I want to get down to the Himalayas which should be our next posting and will then see the rhododendrons you talk of having at the convent. It will make me feel nearer to you, my little lass.

  I think if it was warmer you would find it good here. The views take the breath from your chest and the wild life is the sort you only read about in books. Yesterday I saw a leopard and we hear the wolves at night. The Hindu Kush mountains are too large to be real. I will bring you to India one day, but not here; I will find a place I love and that is warm and clear and it will be there that we will have our honeymoon.

  It will make the time go more quickly to think of that day, but I don’t know how long it will be; there’s quite a way for me to go before I have a chance of becoming an officer because that is what I intend to be; for you and for me.

  I thank God, the real God not Bob, that Sarah took you out of Wassingham when she did. The depression, what we hear of it, sounds bad. Tom tells me a bit, but not all. He’s in work, he says, but not Davy yet, though they’re both up on soap-boxes shouting their mouths off most of the time from what he tells me. If we had married and still been there, what would have become of us?

  I have to write these long letters my darling, there is so much spilling out of me, so much I want to say to you, but what I want more than anything is to see your face, feel you in my arms, kiss your lips. But it will be a long time yet and I will say what I always say to you; you must be free my love, free to make other friends, take other lovers, because life is too short to be wasted and to turn down love.

  Just remember my sweetest darling that I love you more than life itself and that, in the end, I will be there to teach you how to hang by your arms from the bar. I didn’t on that day of the fair, did I? I will always regret that.

  Sweet dreams, my bonny lass. Thank you for your precious letters which I keep with me all the time, though some are so well read that they are in pieces.

  I will write again, my love,

  Georgie.

  Annie smoothed the letter in half, then quarters and put it in her inside pocket. She was still in the stinging snow, amongst scrub holly-oak, still standing dwarfed by the mountain range as she pushed her bike out into the road and on towards school. She rode up the drive past the rhododendrons which had been beautiful in June, a month ago.

  She would like to see them growing at the foot of a mountain, but only if it was with him, with her love, and the ache which his letters always brought burned through her and she wanted to walk and run anywhere so long as it was without people. She wanted to lie on a warm meadow bank or on a windswept dune and think of him, urge him to come home, will him to come back to her. But today was Wednesday and she was here, at school, and it was piano with Miss Hardy. She shrugged Georgie up into a corner of her mind, pushed him until he could barely be seen, be felt, until she was in bed tonight, free of interference and climbed back into the convent and her life today.

  The music room was across from the main building in what used to be the old hay loft above the stables. Marjorie Phelps was in before her and the notes flowed melodically through the brown door behind which the old bag would be sitting, smiling like the Cheshire Cat because some little nimbled-fingered princess of the keyboard was putting pianissimo where it belonged.

  Her leather music-case flopped along her thighs as she sat on one of the two chairs which lined the small waiting-room. She was tired today, she always was on a Wednesday because Tuesday evening she was at the cottage hospital. It had been Sundays only at first but Sister Newsome had asked her if she could come in on one evening as well to read to the patients. It calmed them before their operations Sister Newsome had explained, her purple sister’s uniform crisp and her buckle large and glinting.

  Annie had been pleased because her duties should have been just tea-making and plate-washing in this part-time job she had seen advertised in the local paper. This small sister though, with her laughing eyes and brisk, but kind efficiency, had begun to ask her to roll bandages, sit with ill patients, play with sick children with shorn deliced heads. And Annie loved it; loved to watch the nurses as they changed dressings, fought for a life. Loved to watch Sister Newsome take charge of a crisis or just run her ward from day to day. She envied her authority, her competence. Yes, she had been pleased but it made her tired. She would not stop though because, as well as loving it, she needed to be able to give Sarah those few shillings each week.

  She looked at the door opposite and a pulse flickered in her throat at the thought of the next half hour. That Sarah should think piano-playing a useful asset in later life was absurd. Even Jenn’s mother had let her stop and she was very much a drawing-room devotee.

  There was no noise now, no flowing scales, no fluid arpeggios. The door opened.

  ‘Oh dear, come along in, Ann, and very well done, Marjorie. One would wish all one’s pupils were such a joy.’

  You’re no violet yourself, you know, thought Annie as she squeezed passed the small round woman with gold-rimmed glasses and moles on her pale dry skin.

  She slid on to the stool and pumped away at the scale of ‘C’ as Miss Hardy first stood behind her, then moved to sit down on the chair at her side. The metronome gained on her as usual and the sharp pencil jabs began.

  ‘Evenly, Ann. How often do I have to say it? Have you practised at all?’ The metronome continued to tick.

  Annie yawned; it was slow and deliberate because one knuckle was oozing blood slowly and it hurt but she would not show that she was affected.

  ‘I suppose you have been out gallivanting with all and sundry and paying no attention to your work.’ Miss Hardy was sitting bolt upright on a chair next to Annie. She could see the movement of her plump thighs each time her rhythm broke but it was the fidgeting broke it. The piano had a dark glossy varnish and was wedged across the corner of the small room. The window was to the right of Miss Hardy and through it Annie could see the girls as they walked from the tennis courts to the changing-rooms in the school. They trailed their tennis rackets in loose hands and clouds hung motionless in the pale blue sky beyond the school vegetable garden. A row of runner beans was beginning to sport heavy red flowers and she smelt the scent of leeks from long ago and felt Don’s hair as she tugged his head up to hers and wondered yet again why he went on provoking the neighbourhood and knew that it was because there was more money in it for him. He was a fool, a bloody fool and he wouldn’t listen to her but Tom had said he would make sure he got through to that thick skull before an iron bar did. Tom was growing up fast, she thought, older than his 15 years but the pits did that to a man, so did a woman and as she stumbled over ‘Sunshine after Rain’ she grinned to think of him and Grace and was pleased.

  ‘This won’t do, you know, Ann.’ The pencil jabbed again into the back of her hand. ‘Two mistakes in that piece and no heart at all.’

  Miss Hardy flicked over the pages of the book, her gold charm bracelet rattling as she did so.

  ‘Try this one and remember the “F” sharp.’ She pencilled round the note with a flourish.

  Annie stumbled over the ‘F’ sharp as she always did; somehow her fingers just did not make that lift to the black note cleanly. Miss Hardy’s voice was rising nicely, she thought, a little earlier than usual perhaps and she braced herself for the tirade. Annie knew she provoked this woman, always had done and she felt it was someth
ing to do with Sarah but did not know what.

  ‘I blame the home of course.’ Miss Hardy was rocking in sharp movements and Annie was ready for the jab when it came. The kettle was boiling on the small table in the corner and Annie noted that the outburst was rather more powerful than usual. She lurched into an arpeggio, also in ‘C’ and the kettle was allowed to continue boiling; the lid rattled and Annie could see the cup out of the corner of her eye and wished Miss Hardy would have her usual tea-break. It always calmed her down.

  ‘I suppose,’ Miss Hardy went on with her voice like a coiled spring, ‘it’s boys, making you tired, making you rude and obstinate.’ She jabbed again and Annie felt the first stirrings of anger.

  ‘Now “The Skater’s Waltz”, if you please.’ She reset the metronome. The tick was faster.

  Still the kettle rattled. ‘Shall I turn off the kettle, Miss Hardy?’ The steam was drifting across the ceiling now.

  ‘You see, I do not go out at night.’ Miss Hardy was staring at her, her glasses glinting and her face screwed up as though she was about to cry.

  ‘I live with my friend, hardly ideal, is it? We don’t really get on but it’s better than being alone. No men left you see, all killed you see. It’s not that we were unattractive, you know, it’s just that there was no one left from the trenches.’ Her voice was shrill and unpleasant. ‘It’s not out of choice that I’m teaching, spending hours with girls like you who do not wish to be here.’ She was shaking now and Annie left her seat and turned off the kettle. ‘We’re all wasted women aren’t we, dried up, all wasted.’ Miss Hardy was ranting now.

  ‘Well most of them are nuns,’ Annie replied.

  ‘Not just here, you obdurate girl,’ she raged on. Her face red now, her breathing rapid almost as though she was choking. Jenn said she got like this when she’d had a row with her friend.

  ‘Stupid, stupid girl, get out of here. I refuse to teach such impertinence, such appalling lack of talent.’ She sat straight-backed, her lips pursed. ‘And there are those that throw marriage out of the window as though it were of no value. Trollops and scarlet women as you know only too well.’