Women of Courage (134 page)

“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.

5

“E
XODUS CHAPTER 4, verse 9.
‘Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me; and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress us.’“

The strident roar of Israel Fuller’s great preaching voice filled the little barn like thunder, defying any man to ignore it. The last murmurs and scuffles were stilled as the preacher paused to let his text sink home. Ann felt the words ring slowly quieter in her head, and then fade at last out of the echoing barn into the twilit woodland beyond, where a few birds still sang the final challenges of their evensong.

From where she sat with Tom and her brother Simon near the open door, she could see one of the lookouts sitting silently under a tree, watching the gathering dusk in the valley to the south. She wondered if he could hear the reverend Fuller’s sermon from there. But even if he could, she knew the lookout’s duty tonight was to listen to more than that - to the sound of the wood settling down in the dusk, to the birdsong and the sigh of the wind and the unexplained, mysterious rustles in the grass, and to reassure himself that they were all as normal, that there was no sudden cry of a disturbed blackbird followed by the clink of horses’ hooves on stone, or the regular rustle and tramp of marching men. If there was, the congregation would leave, instantly, and almost certainly escape; for the barn, a few yards into a wood on a hilltop between Colyton and Axminster, was easily approached and left by three different roads, all obscured from each other. Only if they had been betrayed would the dissenters be caught.

Someone coughed in the silence in front of her, and the preacher began his exposition of the text.

“So spake the Lord unto Moses, when He sent him into Egypt to rescue His chosen people from the oppression of the unbeliever. For long years they had writhed under the tyrant’s yoke, forbidden to meet for worship, yea, forbidden to gather together in the sight of the Lord! They were leaderless, oppressed, dejected. The might of the tyrant’s power was ranged against them. Many, no doubt, believed themselves abandoned by their leaders abroad, forgotten, hopeless, in despair. Some, we know, became faithless, and even sought the company of the enemy, prospering in the paths of sin ...”

His voice lowered to a menacing, scornful whisper as he spoke the last words, and his dark, glittering eyes searched the faces in front of him. Ann shivered as she thought his eye paused on her, but then his glance passed on.

“In such a case, brethren, do we also find ourselves today. We too are oppressed, in thrall to the religion of the heathen, forced to meet in secret to worship our Lord. Nay, in some part ...”

Relieved that the secrets of her soul were not yet discovered, Ann found her attention wandering from the obvious analogy the preacher was drawing. She glanced at Tom as he sat beside her, his dark head nodding earnestly in agreement with the sermon, his great hand resting on the knee of his serge breeches. The hand was massive and simple and strong, the thumbs thick and spatulate, the veins pulsing with the unconscious, vigorous power that at once attracted and repelled her. This was the man she had said she would marry. Unless ...

He felt her watching him, and turned, with a half-smile that became a frown as he saw her mind was wandering; but as she forced her attention back to the sermon she saw a hint of dark guilt cross his eyes, as though he too was troubled by a thought he should not have had. Then, as the sermon reached its first crescendo, Tom’s great hand clenched until the bunched knuckles were white, and pounded up and down on his knee in a way that made her shudder again, far more than at any word Israel Fuller had said.