Saints (11 page)

She released his arm, and he pulled it away. He’s only eleven, she reminded herself. We’re all still children, and yet I refuse to admit that my wants are childish. I refuse. But to dissemble: “I might have a son like you someday, and how would I teach him?” Ah, yes, that eased his worry, he could understand
that
, and so he grew cheerful again, and taught her a bit more, even though it was getting late and she’d pay for this with excruciating weariness at work in the morning.

At last he realized that she could ill afford the loss of sleep, and he stood to leave, only glancing at Anna where she lay sleeping with rasping breath. Dinah saw it, though. “She doesn’t mind staying a servant, if you learn well, Charlie,” Dinah said. “She’d do far worse to give you a chance in life.”

“I know it.” He smiled at her ruefully. “If I’m ever rich, I’ll pay it back to her.”

Dinah shook her head. “Only to your own children. It’s a debt you can only repay to your own children.”

He did not leave, not yet; he had one more thing to say. “Dinah,” he said. “Whitesides hurt me, and I thought his was the face of the devil. But when Old Hulme hurts me, I look at him and I see—I see that he—”

“That he means well for you?”

“I see the face of God.”

Dinah nodded and smiled. “Perhaps so.”

Charlie shook his head. “He’s only a crazy old man. But he was once great. And he wants to make
me
great, too. He said so.”

“And he will.”

Charlie stepped out and closed the door behind him. Dinah sighed and undressed and climbed into the bed beside her mother. To her surprise, Anna was not asleep.

“To him you talk,” she murmured.

It took Dinah a moment to realize what Anna meant. Dinah was not conscious of how silent she usually was, nor of how loquacious she had been tonight. She said simply, “I had something to say.”

For three years Charlie studied with Old Hulme, and came home and taught Dinah, sometimes at night, but always on Sunday. There was no Latin or Greek, but the numbers made up for it. The numbers were infinite, and he drilled and drilled every day until he could manipulate ridiculously large sums and columns in his head, never needing to touch a pencil to paper. Dinah couldn’t keep up with him in that, though she did well enough, practicing the calculations as she ran her spinning jenny. What she loved were the other lessons, the ones that Old Hulme threw in almost as an afterthought, because he meant Charlie to make his way in the world, and a man of the world must know more than money. So it was that Charlie came home on weekends with books of verse. For months they read
Paradise Lost
, and pored over Pope and Dryden, Gray and Shakespeare and Spenser and Sidney and Jonson until the verse fairly sang in her. When the numbers forsook her and the belts were near to driving her mad, then came the memory of Charlie’s voice reciting, for his voice had a melody that spoke of true understanding of the verse, and it kept her from madness, that voice, kept her still when she wanted to throw herself into the belts and be free. Free of what? She didn’t know. She couldn’t speak of these feelings to anyone, for they would only say, Why don’t you simply quit your work? Robert makes enough now. Robert makes plenty. And indeed he did. So much that the pittance she earned as an operator was almost embarrassing when she gave it to Anna and Robert glared. Why did she do it, when she hated every moment that she spent at the factory? And yet she knew that if she quit she would despise herself, that if she gave up the slavery of the spinning mill, it would only be to trade it for another sort of slavery: being subject to Robert’s rule. At rare moments she admitted to herself that that was what kept her in the factory. Robert. And yet he was no tyrant. He was gentle, and though he worked hard he made no unreasonable demands. I’m a fool, I’m proud and I’ll go to hell for it, she admitted to herself. The one thing she could not admit was that she couldn’t bear the thought of being subject to any man’s power. And so to avoid her kind brother, she kept herself under the watchful eye of Mr. Uray, the overseer.

Mr. Uray. He had been a figure of terror when she had begun as a doffer three years before, for he was the one who wielded the strap and liked to lay it on. But recently it had changed, her fear of him. He did not strap her now, or not so often, anyway. Now she only felt him watching her as she worked, watching and watching, so that she felt constrained and stiff and awkward as she moved to run the machinery. Because he was watching her she was keenly aware of the way her growing breasts fell forward within her dress when she leaned to loop the thread; because of his unblinking gaze she felt that even under her skirts the movement of her legs was visible. And yet at fourteen years she wasn’t wise enough to put a name to his gaze. It took a friendly older girl to whisper to her, “Watch out for the overseer. You’re too pretty.”

Pretty? That was the one thing that had never occurred to her. Oh, she used a mirror and she wasn’t blind, she knew she was unblemished and she was neither fat nor undernourished-looking—thanks, she knew, to Robert and his ample income, which put fresh fruit and even occasional beef on the table. She was strong and she kept clean so she wouldn’t stink and when she smiled people smiled back. But pretty? It was a new thought, and vaguely disquieting. Mr. Uray watched her because she was pretty. But if he knew that she could do sums far more quickly than he, and that she had poetry in her head that he hadn’t sense enough to understand, would he stand and watch her
then?

So she thought little about her face and body, and studied whatever Charlie brought to her to learn, and refused even to wonder what would come of it, what good this learning would ever do for her. She only knew that it was the hours on Sunday with Charlie drilling her on numbers or testing her on the nations of Europe and their commodities and shipping or chanting “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”—it was those hours she lived for, and could not do without.

For the three years of Charlie’s training with Old Hulme she lived for the crumbs from the table of education, knowing all the while that it would do her no good, knowing all the while that it would end; yet still the end could take her by surprise.

Perhaps Charlie understood something of that, for he broke the news to her gently when the years of his schooling were up. “Dinah, I’m sorry, but I can’t teach you anything tonight.”

She looked at him in surprise over the supper table where her bread and cheese lay untasted.

“Because,” he said, “I had no schooling today. Old Hulme and Young Hulme together took me into the city, to the firm of Coswith, Royal and Clay, Solicitors.”

“You’ve gone to work.”

“He said it was time for me to have experience in the world. He’s tested and tried me, but there’s only one proving ground that matters. They’re paying me nine and six a month.”

Nine and six a month! No wonder Robert stood glowering in the corner. Nine pounds six shillings! It was a higher wage than Robert earned! Oh, Charlie would work for it, Charlie assured them. There every morning at seven, and not home until six, and he must bring his dinner for there’d be no hour to come home at noon. Dinah thought of what it would be like to come home at six, and with so much money. Why, Charlie was wealthy—just like that. And Robert had doubted Charlie’s education would come to anything.

“That’s more than a bookkeeper should be getting,” Dinah said.

“I’m not just a bookkeeper,” Charlie answered. “Old Hulme had me examine the company’s books. All these years I’ve thought that every bookkeeper trained as I’ve been trained, but there were mistakes all through the books, and they didn’t even have a cross check to protect them against errors. I set it all to rights in front of them, the week’s books, and Old Hulme was a marvel. He looks to be an old fool, but my new masters, they know better, I should guess. He says to them, ‘Since he’s worth any two of the bookkeepers you have now, you should put him in charge of them all.’”

“In charge of grown men?” Dinah asked. She heard Robert begin to pace the floor, though she didn’t look at him or call attention to his discomfiture.

“That’s what Mr. Royal said. ‘How will I get grown men to take instruction from a boy of—good Lord, thirteen!’”

“Now Charlie, watch how you take the Lord’s name—”

“Mother, I’m only saying what
he
said. And Old Hulme says, ‘Simple. Just
pay
him more than you pay them.’ He asked for ten a month, but they settled on nine and six.”

At that Robert could bear no more, and he blurted out, “They’re only doing it to keep Old Hulme happy, he’s such a client of theirs!”

Dinah could see rage instantly flash into Charlie’s eyes, and she quickly reached out and touched his arm, and said with a laugh, “Well, of course, that’s the beauty of it—Charlie had a teacher who could make sure his pupil got a good place at the end of his education!” The tension eased a bit. The telling and the excitement went on awhile, Dinah taking great care to bring Robert into the rejoicing. And finally, when it had gone on so long that Robert was beginning to be snide despite her efforts, Dinah said the one thing that she knew would silence him—but happily.

“And best of all, Robert, your money won’t be needed in
this
house—you can spend it in another.”

“Another! And what other house is that?”

Dinah laughed at him. “Why, yours and Mary Handy’s!”

That did it; the conversation turned, with Dinah and Anna teasing him as he denied any thought of marriage. “And why not!” Anna said, laughing. “It’s plain you don’t think she’s so ugly you won’t talk to her—”

“She’s not ugly!”

“Well, then, why do you deny you want to marry her?”

“She’s far too young.”

At that Dinah laughed nastily. “She’s only a year younger than I am, and you told me only last week that I should have been married a year ago!”

A bit more banter, and at last they separated, the women to their room, the men—for Charlie had become at last a man today—to theirs. But Robert did not stay long in his room; he came to Dinah after she was in bed and knelt by her and whispered, “Dinah, may I talk to you?”

“Mm,” she agreed.

“Dinah, why does Charlie hate me so?”

“He doesn’t,” she said.

“Then tell me why it is I hate
him?
”

The words made her tremble inside. They were brothers, and here he could speak of hate. “You don’t, either.”

“I’ll tell you this. I won’t take Mary to wife as a favor from
Charlie
, you can be sure of that. His money won’t get me married.”

“Don’t be a fool, Robert.”

“I don’t give a damn if I’m a fool—”

She touched his lips to hush him, though she knew that Mother was undoubtedly awake and silently listening. “Robert, you’re not the father in this house. For all these years you’ve kept us, and kept us well. And at last God has opened up a door for you to be free.”

“I don’t mind supporting the family.”

“And neither will Charlie. Your money should be going into the home where you’re the husband and father, not here. Charlie’s giving you no gift. He’s finally making up for all the years of food and shelter that we all owe to you.”

“I don’t want to be repaid.”

“Don’t quibble, Robert. Take Mary before she gets tired of waiting. Who cares if it’s Charlie or the devil, just so you can be happy.”

It was enough to make Robert content, and he left.

Dinah thought to sleep then, but it was not done, not yet. Mother began to whisper beside her in the darkness. “I have to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“I said nothing, because I didn’t want to rob from Charlie’s glory.”

Dinah waited, still not sure if it was good news or bad.

“This morning, before Young Hulme left with Charlie and the old man, he called me into the parlor and dismissed me.”

“Gave you the sack!”

“Oh, Dinah, he stood up when I came into the room as if I were a lady, and he said, ‘No one knows better than I the sacrifice you’ve made all these years, to remain a servant when you were born to better things, all so your son could have his start in life. Madam,’ he said to me, ‘you’ve served this household well, but you’re not a servant, and as of this moment the days of your humiliation are over. I honor you.’ He said that to
me
. ‘I honor you.’ I memorized the words all the way home, I can still hear him saying them.”

Mother wept to be free, and Dinah embraced her, and finally Anna fell asleep.

Dinah lay there, weary but too unquiet in her heart to sleep. Charlie was joyful, and Robert was free, and Mother’s servitude had ended, but where would it end for Dinah? She was not blind; she saw how they had all told their tales to her, how they all came to her to grieve and to rejoice, how she was the spindle that wound them all together into a single thread, even when they threatened to fray apart and break. She was at the center of them all, and held them all—but who held her? Who would set her free?

I am seventeen years old and know no course in life that interests me at all. My life is bound about by machinery on one side and my brothers on the other. There is no escape for me in either direction, for if I touch the one it will catch me up and kill me, and if I lean on the other, they will also take me and hold me and rule me and if that happens it will be worse than death for I would despise myself without relief.

The factory was nearly unbearable. Surrendering to her brothers’ desire to care for her and control her—that would be worse. And so she finally slept, praying silently for something, anything to happen that would set her upon the course her life should follow, the path that would lead to a destination worth arriving at.

After all, she was tired. If she had been more alert, she might have thought twice before praying such a thing. She well knew that God has a way of granting our most foolish prayers. And this prayer was no exception. God will rarely let slip an opportunity to play one of his uproarious practical jokes.

As luck would have it, Old Hulme died only four days before Robert’s wedding. It was the perfect touch, to have Charlie grieving in the cottage while Robert fairly danced with excitement. They both tried to be decent, of course. Charlie would smile and laugh at times, and Robert at times would be somber. But there was no life in Charlie’s laughter, and too much mirth behind Robert’s sobriety. Even now when harmony should have been possible, Providence had assured that the division in the family would only widen.

The funeral was on Sunday, so Dinah went with Charlie. Robert and Anna had offered to go, too, but Dinah had quietly said, “Charlie learned from the old man’s lips, and in a way so did I. We’re the ones who have a part of him in us, and we’ll go alone.” When she spoke that way, her family rarely argued with her. It was better that way. It gave Robert a chance to bring Mary to the house for a time of merriment. And Dinah was also secretly glad that she did not have to be there when Mary came. Not that she didn’t like Mary—the girl was sweet, if a bit daft about Robert, and she had become something like a friend to Dinah. No, it was Mary’s brother, who came with Robert and Mary as inevitably as a shadow, it was Matthew Handy that Dinah wanted to avoid.

What was wrong with Matthew? Nothing, really. As Dinah walked to the funeral, silently holding Charlie’s hand, she tried to decide why she was so glad not to see Matthew. Certainly she had no reason to dislike him—she
didn’t
dislike him, really, she told herself. He was shy around her, he tended to stammer with her, or make boorish jokes that were laughed at only out of charity. She was not so naive that she didn’t know he had eyes for her. Not like Mr. Uray, who was making life harder and harder for her at the factory; Matthew didn’t measure her bosom or her buttocks with his gaze. Rather he worshiped. That was, in a way, harder to take. Lechery could be ignored. But adoration—that laid upon her an obligation she did not know how to pay. At least, not in any coin she was willing to offer him. And then she condemned herself for her pride. Matthew was a good man, and it was a sin for her to despise him merely because he admired her.

At the cathedral Charlie broke down and cried, and Dinah realized for the first time how much his teacher had meant to him. It surprised her, for it reminded her that Charlie’s fourteen years were so very few; he was still a child. She knew him well enough not to put her arm around him there in the church, where others would see. She let him wear his grief with dignity. After a while, Charlie went to the coffin and kissed the coffin. Dinah came with him, and heard him clearly say, “Two million four hundred thousand, at fourteen percent.” It was such an odd thing to say, especially with his cheeks tear-stained, that Dinah almost laughed. But she did not. He would tell her soon enough what it meant.

Outside, on the way home, Charlie was full of speech. Memories of the teaching. Even the many times his hands were slapped he spoke of with affection. “And the Hulme and Kirkham Company.” He sighed.

It was plainly an invitation for her to invite him. “Go on—what was that?”

“I never told you because it was so silly, but—when I first started with him, he gave me a thousand pounds in imaginary capital, and advised me in the investment of it. All imaginary, everything we did, but we followed the offers of stock and the sales of land, and I wrote down what I would have done with the money. At first he corrected me when I made a bad investment and told me why, and then after a time he let me learn from my own mistakes. But in the last year or so I made no mistakes. If the money had been real, Hulme and Kirkham would now have control of investments and properties worth two million four hundred thousand pounds, with an average return of fourteen percent. He would have been—” And then he could not go on.

It struck Dinah as touching and yet perverse that Charlie’s love for Old Hulme was so linked with an imaginary sum of money. It disturbed her vaguely to discover that Charlie measured his own worth in pounds and shillings and percentages of return. It was not that uncommon a measure of personal value, as much among the poor as among the rich. A man
was
how much he owned or earned, and the greatest division of all was between owners and earners. In his heart Charlie was an owner; in his life he could only earn. She had not, until now, realized how Charlie’s life centered around money. It was the scholar and poet in him that she most loved, and yet he valued this aspect of himself least of all. She had seen in him the seeds of his own unhappiness and knew it, though she could not name her fears.

At home again Charlie said his courtesies to Mother and Robert and the Handys, who were obviously merry with beer in the front room; then he retreated to the bedroom. In short order Robert announced that it was time he and Matthew went to the pub to drink to his bachelorhood “and give a speech to my friends deploring virginity and enlisting their support in the abolition of it!” Anna feigned horror and hurried them out the door.

The talk among the women followed the inevitable path—Dinah herself would later guide many such discussions the day before a wedding, though now she had a curious feeling of detachment, as if she were standing outside the window, looking and listening as Anna, Mary, and a stranger named Dinah discussed matters of marriage.

It began with talk of the wedding itself, congratulating themselves on all that they had planned and what a fine affair it was going to be and how it didn’t matter that there wasn’t enough money to really do it
right
.

Then the talk turned to what life after marriage was going to be. Here Anna turned it into something of a monologue. To Dinah it sounded as paradoxical as a sermon or the Gospel of St. John. You must keep your home impeccably clean for him, but never be so absorbed in housecleaning that you forget to listen to him when he talks. You must have meals ready for him when he needs them, but never let him see you tired or unbeautiful. You must always be there for him; you must never be in his way. You must obey him always; you must not wait to be commanded in anything. You must never argue with him; you must keep him from making mistakes that he will regret. You must never bring up problems and worries; you must have no secrets from him.

Dinah could finally bear no more. She laughed aloud and said, “Mother, it would take at least two wives to accomplish all of that.”

Immediately she regretted having said it, for Anna’s face became rueful, and she nodded wistfully, and the talk turned again, into realms of pain from which Anna had tried to emigrate years ago, but never quite succeeded. “It’s true.
I
never succeeded in any of that, nor any woman I know. Though
you
may, Mary—you’re such a glad girl, it’ll smooth many a quarrel before the first word gets spoken.”

“We’ll never quarrel,” Mary said. “I’ll give in too quickly.”

Dinah could not account for the strange anger that came to her then. But she held her tongue and said nothing.

“John and I never quarreled,” Anna said. “But still he left me. There’s more than that.” She sighed and looked at the wall, where imaginary paintings hung. “I’ve thought about it often and often during these years, I’ve thought why did he leave me.”

“He left because he was weak,” Dinah said coldly. She was afraid of what her mother would say.

“No, he wasn’t weak. He was strong in his own way. But the needs of others weighed on him. Think what a man goes through. When he goes to work, he doesn’t carry just the labor of the job with him. He also carries on his shoulders all his children, and his wife, all the bellies he has to fill—all his days are spent satisfying others. When does he satisfy himself?” Anna hesitated, for it was not an easy thing for her to say. “He satisfies himself in his wife’s bed. No, don’t blush or get silly when I say it. We’re only women here, and I’ll speak frankly, as much for my daughter as for you, Mary. When there is nothing between your husband and you but your own flesh, what he needs is to satisfy himself, and no one else. My mistake was that I loved his body more than he loved mine. My mistake was that I desired his love. I took more pleasure from our embraces than he did, and he knew it, so that even in our bed he was satisfying me more than himself. Even that became an obligation for him, instead of a release. Do you understand? It’s a great pleasure, the love of a man and a woman, and the preachers who tell you about the carnality of lustfulness between a husband and a wife are liars. It’s a glorious thing that God gave to Adam and Eve as their greatest comfort in this lone and dreary world. But it isn’t good for the woman to show her pleasure too much. Don’t cry out for joy. Don’t clasp him hard or urge him on. Act as if it were only a gift you gave to him, and then he will be satisfied. Take your pleasure, but secretly.”

Dinah could not understand why this made her so upset. She was a virgin and had hardly talked of this with anyone, only the joking comments among the women at the factory. Yet she could not hold her tongue. “I still say it was Father who was weak. A real man would rejoice in the pleasure he gave his wife, and not begrudge her any of it.”

Of course Mother smiled patiently and nodded. Of course Mary blushed and looked at her lap. “There’s time enough for you, Dinah,” Anna said. “You’re still so young.”

Dinah laughed in embarrassment. “I’m a year older than Mary.”

“Forgive me for saying it, Dinah, but a mother must say such things. All married women are older than all unmarried girls, regardless of their years.”

“Mary isn’t married yet.”

“Even the day before a wedding, a woman’s heart changes. She begins to know things that a woman who has not given her life into a man’s hands can never know.”

Dinah longed to make a sharp retort to that, because it hurt her to be made to feel so childish, and by her own mother. But she held her peace as she had known from infancy to hold her peace. Things were simpler that way, and anger soon faded. Besides, for all she knew her mother might be right. And she was jealous of Mary and contemptuous of her: jealous that she would be initiated into the mysteries of passion, of conception, and of birth; contemptuous because Mary was too small for him. How could a woman not despise herself, to marry so unworthily a man who deserved an equal partner? Or the opposite, as Mother did, to marry a man who needed someone small-hearted and weak, who could not hold his own with a woman who had something of the strength of Ruth in her?

Ruth: The woman who knew only one man in Israel was worthy of her, and so went to Boaz and lay at the foot of his bed, not waiting for chance to bring them together, because she knew that only she could make him happy, and only he could give her joy.

I would rather stay a maiden all my life than marry a man too great or too small for me. She meant it when she said it, or at least the second part; even now she suspected there might not be a man who was too much for her, for she had never met one, not even her brothers.

Of course the other women misinterpreted Dinah’s silence; people usually did. Mary tried to reassure her. “You’ll marry, too, Dinah, and soon. Though I may have taken the last good husband in the world.”

Dinah smiled. “Probably. But I’ll make do.” Lies made conversations go so much more smoothly.

For once, perversely, someone saw through her lie. “You’re not so easy as you pretend, are you?” Mary said. “
Is
there a man, then?”

“Not for me.”

Of course when Dinah told the truth she would not be believed; Mary was too clever for that. “Oh, you can’t fool me. There’s a man. But why is your face so sad? Look at her, Mother Kirkham. Oh, she denies it, but her heart is breaking for someone. It’s a tragic love—someone hopelessly above her station that she cannot wed.”

The histrionic tone in Mary’s voice was infuriating. She was turning Dinah’s life into a ridiculous romance. And yet Dinah said nothing, for the only thing she could think of to say was, “
I’m
not the one who’s marrying above her station,” and it would never do to say
that
.

Mary took silence for consent, of course. “It’s like Romeo and Juliet! Who is he? Dinah, you must tell us!”

“My heart isn’t breaking.”

“See how she suffers in silence, Mother Kirkham? Oh, we won’t tell anyone, not even Matthew, though it would break his heart.” And then Mary put her hand to her mouth and giggled. “I shouldn’t have said that, should I? He’d just kill me if he knew. But it’s true, and I’m glad I said it, so there.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s dying for love of you.”

“People don’t die for love,” Dinah said.

“Perhaps not. But sometimes they suffer so much that they wish they could.”

“Mother, perhaps it’s time for us to go to bed.”

But Anna would be no help to her. “Don’t be rude, Dinah. You know Mary’s welcome here as long as she likes.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Mary said. “I wouldn’t offend you for the world. But it’s true. Matthew said so. He said he’s so jealous of Robert, marrying the woman he loves. And so jealous of me, to be taking a Kirkham into my bed.” Mary blushed, but clumsily stumbled on. “Matthew’s a blunt one, plainspoken, if you know my drift. He thinks you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“His perspective would improve if he stopped going to pubs with Robert and saw more women instead.”

Mary was so caught up in her own enthusiasm now that she was incapable of knowing when she was being told to shut up. “Oh, Dinah, wouldn’t it be lovely if we could be sisters?”

At last Mother saw that things had gone too far, and she interrupted the grotesque conversation. “Mary, dear, tomorrow you and Dinah
will
be sisters.”

“Oh, yes, of course, I forgot. Robert and I will be one, as the parson says. I’m to
be
Robert, in a way, we’ll be parts of the same person, and so we
will
be sisters, won’t we!”

And on that cheerful note the conversation turned to other matters until Robert and Matthew came tipsily home, singing bawdy songs until Anna threatened to throw both of them into the street and let Mary stay with them tonight. Finally all was calm; Mary and Matthew were gone, and Robert snored heavily, filling the bedroom with the smell of celebratory beer.