Saints (5 page)

Dinner came with a whistle at noon, and there was a mad scramble for shoes; Robert got his near last, trying to be courteous, and so lost five minutes of the precious forty-five alotted. He ran home—ten more minutes gone—and found Dinah and Charlie there with no food prepared, no dinner even begun.

“What have you been doing all morning?” Robert shouted.

“Reading,” said Charlie. Dinah held up her mending.

“Don’t you know I have but fifteen minutes at home, or they take my wages for being late? The food must be ready when I get here!”

Dinah looked at him coldly; she said nothing, but he could hear her words all the same: Who are you to give orders?

“I’m who earns what Father ought to earn, that’s who I am, and it means my meals are ready when I need them!” He groaned and threw himself on the bed where Charlie was lying with his book.

“Get off me,” Charlie shouted.

“Get off the bed. I need to rest.” He was not trying to offend; he had simply never been so exhausted in his life, and the longest part of the day was yet ahead. His muscles ached from the unusual labor, his back and hand ached, he had no thought to be deferent. Either Charlie understood that, or Robert’s tone frightened him—he silently went over to Anna’s and Dinah’s bed. Dinah set water to boil in the fireplace, then walked to the foot of the bed and looked at Robert’s back.

“Why are you bleeding?”

“Hurt my hand in the machinery.”

“Not your hand. Your back.”

Robert raised his head from the sheet. “Is it bleeding?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Knew it hurt, didn’t know the strap drew blood.”

“Strap?”

“Overseer.”

Dinah looked horrified. At that Robert knew he had said too much. “You won’t tell Mother, will you? She might take me out of there, and we need the money. I’m getting better at it—I won’t get beaten too often.” Dinah’s eyes stayed wide, and Robert knew he could not take her silence for assent. “Promise, both of you, that you won’t tell Mother.”

They promised. He drank tea and took a cold potato with him, so he could eat while walking back. Yet he was oddly cheerful. For the first time in years all was as it should be. He thought of Dinah’s awe at the blood he had shed for them and was content.

Anna was already bone weary. The child in her was not heavy enough to weigh her down yet, but it sucked strength from her constantly, and the long walk in the hot sun was costing her dearly. She had gone through the great row houses of the rich, and had been told the same everywhere. “It’s girls we want, woman, not old ones who’ve never been trained. Just girls.”

Once, weary enough to forget herself, Anna had mentioned Dinah. “Ten years old and strong and willing and smart as a whip.”

The butler, who had charge of screening candidates for employment, looked interested. “Bring her by. We might be able to pay her two shillings a week, if she works out.”

But the maid who showed her to the back door stepped outside with her. “Mum, don’t bring your daughter, not to this house.”

“Why not?”

“Because the master likes to plant in fields that aren’t his own.”

Anna was not too surprised—rumors of this kind of thing were rampant in the middle class, where the best gossip was of the failings of the rich. “She’s only ten,” Anna said, as if that made all the difference.

“Aye,” said the maid. “I know. He also likes to plow new soil.” And the woman had ducked back inside, leaving Anna to wander through the narrow gap that led to the street.

This afternoon she had begun looking in at the larger estates outside of Manchester, where the houses were surrounded by land, with long drives. Usually the gatekeeper would tell her, “We an’t lookin’, mum. No hiring today.” Occasionally there was no gatekeeper, or he would merely shrug and let her by.

One such place had a drive lined with roses. Anna leaned over and smelled one. She remembered that John had often compared her to a rose. Often before they were married. And after, too, but where before he had said much about the blossom and the scent and the softness of the petals, in after years he made more mention of the thorns. It was a rueful memory, yet not entirely unkind. She did not stand long, bent over the rose; the flower might speak of her youth, but the pain in her back and thighs and ankles spoke of age and the infant in her, ravenously draining her of strength.

Apparently the butler was observant. He was already speaking angrily when he opened the servants’ door. “I saw you stop at the roses! You didn’t pluck one, did you?”

“No!”

“I doubt it! I know your kind. What do you want?”

“Work.”

“Work,” he answered, mockingly. “And when you hear we don’t have work, you’ll be asking for a hot meal all the same, won’t you?”

“You’ve accused me now of being a thief and a beggar, sir, but I assure you that I’m neither.”

“I’m glad to hear it. We don’t have work, so you can go.”

It was too much for her. She might be forced to look for servants’ work, but she had grown up in another class. She had treated her father’s servants with dignity, and could not bear this butler treating her so rudely. “Indeed I
can
go, and indeed I
shall
go, but if you had come honestly asking for work at
my
door I’d have given you a glass of water before you left. But then, I can’t expect
you
to be a gentleman. You’re only a servant, and no doubt born to be worse.”

She turned away, thinking to leave, but the butler barred her passage. “Oh, I’m
just
a servant, am I? And what if I was to accuse you of stealing, my fine lady? There’d be a search then, wouldn’t there, and quite a row, and I’d see to it we didn’t stop at the petticoats.”

“Let me go.”

“When you humbly beg my pardon for your sluttish manners.”

Just a moment before, the butler’s face had seemed impervious to emotion, but now it was twisted with rage, and Anna began to wonder if he might be mad. Certainly his eyes were unstable, darting back and forth in his fury, and she thought he might be capable of violence. So, hating herself for a coward, she bowed her head and apologized. “I’m sorry, sir. I spoke out of turn.”

The butler was not satisfied, however, and kept her there another five minutes, calling her names so foul she sometimes did not even understand. She bore it as her penance; she had sinned when she spoke haughtily to him, and now God was kind enough to chastise her immediately, instead of saving the punishment for later. God’s punishments were always easier to bear when they came immediately: then there was not the agonizing process of discovering what sin the punishment was for, so she could finally repent of it and be reprieved.

When at last he let her go, she was livid with shame and unvented rage. The hot sun reflecting painfully from the gravel drive helped little, and near the gate she finally succumbed to her feelings and reached out, plucked a white rose, and stepped on it, twisting her foot to grind it into the fine stones of the drive. The smell of it came up hot and sweet. I am learning, God. I haven’t your finesse, but the result’s the same, isn’t it?

And then she caught herself in the blasphemy and was afraid. Was there no end to her sinfulness and pride? O God, she prayed, O God, O God—but she could not think of anything to say afterward. What was it that she wanted from God? Forgiveness? Punishment? Relief?

Work. That was all she wanted. Work, so that from her pores she could squeeze pennies and shillings like sweat and keep her little ones alive.

And as if God had heard her, a carriage turned into the lane, a fine carriage enclosed against the dust of the dry day. Anna felt a rush of fear, for there was the crushed rose, and God seemed to be upbraiding her promptly today. Then she stepped back to let the carriage pass, and thought of nothing but how nice it would be to ride the miles back home instead of walking. The horses pranced beautifully. As they passed, she noticed that their eyes looked frightened and dangerous. And then a voice from the carriage cried, “Peter, ho up!”

The driver drew in the reins, and the carriage stopped only a few paces beyond her. Her fear returned. The owner of the estate had seen the flower—or worse, seen her crush it.

The carriage door opened. Anna was unsure what she was expected to do. Finally the voice from the carriage called out, “Must I send a postman with a letter inviting you to come?” Anna carefully approached the carriage, stood on the ground outside the open door. Inside a wizened-looking old man was peering out at her intently.

“Sir?” she asked.

“Not him,” said the voice. “Me.” Anna stepped to her right, saw that a much younger and fatter man sat across from the old one.

“That’s my father,” said the younger man. “He’s old and mad and knows nothing, so you needn’t address yourself to him.”

The old man giggled. The sound rattled in his throat.

The younger man leaned forward. “Did you come to beg, or for work?”

“Work.”

“What do you do?”

“Anything, sir. Cleaning, and I’m a fair cook and a better laundress.” She had said the words a dozen times since noon, but they still tasted foul in her mouth. I’m a professional man’s wife, she said in her mind. But outside her manner was obsequious, for she had always known servants, and had the knack of imitating them.

“Anything. Well, then you’ll do. We’ve an old servant who died a few days ago, and I don’t want to fuss with training children to the work. Ten shillings a week, Sunday off, report at six and you may leave at seven in the evening, unless we need you.”

Anna bowed her head. “I doubt your butler will be happy to have me working for you.”

“I doubt I give a damn. My name is Hulme.”

“Anna Kirkham.”

“I will meet you in the library, Anna, in half an hour.”

He tapped with his cane, and the carriage started forward. The old man giggled as the younger Hulme reached out and closed the carriage door.

The dust rose behind the carriage, and Anna turned her face away to breathe clearer air. Ten shillings a week. With Robert’s two and sixpence it was not enough—eighteen shillings a week were needed just to live.

But she had had no other offers, and if worse came to worst she could quit and find other work, she told herself. Yet she knew as she started back up the drive that she would not quit. That this was where she would start work and have to keep working until the baby came.

“Master’s got no judgment when it comes to hiring,” said the butler to the cook. Anna overheard as she came from the library. “He’ll hire a hog if it was easier than looking for quality.”

Anna said nothing. She could quote Adam Smith and Samuel Johnson; she understood Locke and
Leviathan
. What mattered it if the butler taught the other servants to snub her? She was here, not for friendship, but for survival. She docilely followed the head housekeeper upstairs to learn her duties. Silently she thanked God she was rarely sick when pregnant; she would have to be utterly reliable here, hardworking and regular, so that no offense could be charged against her. Yet she could not stop herself from thinking that if God really meant to be kind to her, he might more conveniently have blessed her not to be pregnant at all, or even to have money enough not to have to work, or best of all to have a husband at home, earning well so that she could spend her life educating her children, which was all she cared about, all that she was really good at.

And then, of course, she had to beg forgiveness for having criticized God’s treatment of her, for didn’t God understand her heart and know what she deserved? I am circled about by my own sins, my thorny wickedness; if I am ever freed at all it will be by thy grace; oh, give me grace, my Lord, though I’m unworthy.

Seventeen beds to turn daily. Seventeen rooms to sweep, dust, and air. Windows to wash, floors to scrub, rugs to carry out and beat. She followed the housekeeper and let her feet learn the steps, let her hands learn the work, while her mind endlessly recited poetry in meaningless repetitions. Most of all these words kept coming back to her: But follow me, and I will bring thee where no shadow stays thy coming.

It was after dark, long after supper, and they were working by gaslight when the doffer across from Robert fell into the straps and was killed. The boy had been tired all day, and Robert had watched him lurch to and fro under the weight of full bobbins—and only slightly less under the weight of the empty ones. They had talked at supper. Or, rather, Robert had, trying to strike up some sort of conversation. The boy hadn’t answered—just ate the bread he had brought in his pocket and turned away to sleep the rest of the time.

“His mother’s sick,” Liza told Robert quietly. “He tends her all night while she’s dying, and comes here to try to earn enough by day to keep them both alive.”

“His father?”

“Crippled. And the other children all in the workhouse.” Her voice broke at that. “They all depend on him, poor boy, and he only earns his three a week. It’d be a mercy if she’d die soon, so he could sleep at night. It isn’t right for a child to kill himself this way.”

On their way back into the factory from supper—they only had twenty minutes for it—Robert noticed that two of the operators were harshly shaking the sleeping boy to wake him.

“Can’t they be gentler?” Robert asked.

“And not wake him? If he’s late he loses his place.”

Now no fear will wake him, Robert thought. They had closed down the power to the jennies while they extricated the twisted and broken body from the belts. Everyone was grateful for the rest, even though they grieved for the boy’s death. The overseer walked back and forth, nervously rubbing his hands together, saying, “Terrible, terrible, a dreadful thing to happen,” though Robert was not altogether sure which bothered the overseer more, the boy’s death or the stoppage of work.

Robert was ashamed of it, but the death in the machinery brought him a strange kind of peace. It was because the death was so inevitable; he had sensed it almost from the start, that the power of this place was the power to give life, to give death. Work for money, money for food, food for life; and now the other side of the power, the thirst of the belts, they must drink also, must drink a fluid richer than the sweat that constantly specked its surface. He had known the death was coming from the start. Now it had come, the waiting was over, and to his relief the machinery had taken someone else. Now how long until the engines demanded their next propitiation?

Robert finished putting his bobbin back into its place in the frame; already his work had formed such habits in him that he could do it without thinking. It would take time to get the belts moving again. He took the opportunity to wander off into the roller room. He did not know what he had been looking for until he found it. One of the large machines there had broken down, and three men were laboring to repair it. They were the ones who had been carrying pieces of metal back and forth all day, and Robert stood and watched them silently as they continued their work. It was plain they understood the unintelligible metal lacework, knew what each part was for and how it ought to move. Robert, uninitiated, looked at their inscrutable labors in awe.

Yet not so much awe that he could not try to figure it out. From the belt to the rollers, that was what he could understand. The belt turns the shafts, the shafts turn other belts, gears and pistons and all fit together, engaging and disengaging to wind spool after spool of thread. All of it felt good and true and powerful and he worshiped, for it was beautiful. Except in one place, where he saw that it could not work.

“You’ve got it wrong,” he said.

One of the men, a cheerful-looking fellow of about twenty with grease liberally covering his face, looked over at him.

“Oh. We have?”

“You’ve got two belts connected to this shaft here, and they go opposite ways.”

The man looked where Robert pointed. Another one said, “We haven’t got time for this, Aaron!” But Aaron led Robert closer. “You see this lever? It chooses which of these will engage or disengage over here. You see that? So the machine can go two ways, if the operator wants, forward or backward. You see that? It isn’t a mistake. It’s just damn good engineering.”

Robert was embarrassed and stammered an apology.

“Don’t be sorry. It takes a keen eye to know which way these belts will go. You’re a doffer, right?”

Robert nodded.

“Too bad. An eye like that should be an engineer.”

The man who had interrupted before climbed out from under one of the machines. “Say, little doffer, do you like the way they beat you in there?”

Robert said nothing. It was a question too fraught with danger to answer it straight out.

“Well, if you like it, boy, you’ll be glad to know that the machines have started up in there, and if you dally here a moment longer you’ll be blue from your arse to your ankles.”

Now Robert heard a sound he had only been vaguely conscious of before—the spinning jennies going at full power. He turned, ran back into the room, and made it to the fullest frame before the operator had time to get impatient and call the overseer. Then he saw that the operator was Liza, and remembered that this was the jenny where the boy had been caught up in the straps. No wonder this place had been empty for him. She made no sign of wanting to scold him, though her face was hard and set. As he fiddled with the frame to loose the bobbin, he saw that her eyes were full of tears.

“Careful,” he whispered, leaning near her. “If you can’t see clearly, it could happen bad with you.”

She nodded. It was friendship here, as much as was possible, and words like that might save a hand. A life. But her tears, they stayed with him more than the boy’s death. Her face, ruddy, funny-looking and cheerful, twisted up from crying. Wasn’t right, that’s all, and yet was necessary, in this place it was needful that tears also fall upon the singing metal.

And when he left at ten o’clock, his body all over in pain, his legs so weary that his feet slapped the pavement like a cripple’s feet, then he left his body and dwelt, for a time, only in his mind. He saw Liza crying for the boy, only it was his mother crying for him, only it was St. Mary crying for the slain Lord.

There was singing in the ugly streets beyond Hanging Ditch. The men were drunk, cheerfully singing bawdy songs whose meaning always just eluded Robert; or they mournfully lamented some long-dead hero as a substitute for mentioning the miseries of their present, unromantic life. A slight breeze rattled the rubbish in the streets. It was the mournful songs that most accorded with Robert’s temper, and when he reached Ducie Bridge and the turning to his family’s cottage, he could not stop himself from weeping. It was not for the boy in the factory whose corpse had been stowed in the corner in a bloody cloth for his family to come for him; the tears were for the pain in his body, for the knowledge he would spend another day at the factory tomorrow and the next day and the next day forever. It was for the squalor he now lived in and the memory of better days in childhood. It was for his father, who would not return, for the two and sixpence that were all he had to lay upon the table to ease his mother’s heavy burden. It was for the child Robert, who was dead, replaced by a melancholy old man whose feet spastically slapped against the road as he walked.

He leaned against the corner of the row and wept into his sleeve, wept until he could not weep anymore; then he waited until he judged his eyes would show no sign of his tears before he walked the short way along the riverbank to the cottage.

Anna greeted him with a smile. “Oh, you look weary, Robert. But I bought a fish today, and that should do you good, to have something besides gruel and potatoes and tea, though heaven knows God has blessed us more than we deserve to give us even that much.” She kissed him, but he saw behind the smile and knew that she, too, had lost something in her heart today.

“How did it go?”

She affected delight. “I have a position. Upstairs domestic in a fine rich house in Broughton.” She laughed and cheerfully described the house, the stern housekeeper, the rough-spoken butler. Dinah and Charlie were awestruck at the number of rooms with no one to sleep in them, at the library full of books to the second-story ceiling, at the kitchen with three ovens and three stoves, at the drive lined with roses. Robert noticed something else: all the other servants were described as humorous characters, not as potential friends. And he asked the other question, which ruined it all.

“How much?”

“Ten a week,” Anna said, still smiling.

“With mine that’s twelve and six, and we’d be starving even if we had a pound.”

“We have our savings.”

“Aye, until that money’s gone, and buying fish will finish it much sooner than we like.”

Anna’s smile became wistful. “Robert, Robert, can’t we at least be cheerful tonight? I’m so tired.”

“So am I.” His body shuddered involuntarily. “A boy died at the factory today. Fell asleep and got caught in the machinery.”

Anna gave a little cry. Charlie, of course, was immediately full of questions, but Dinah hushed him. And Anna put a close to the dismal conversation by saying, “At least we can thank God it wasn’t you.”

“Yes, and while we’re thanking God, let’s thank Him He hasn’t burned down the house around our ears, or had us beaten and robbed and left for dead—”

“Robert!” Anna said.

“Oh, pardon me, Mother, I spoke prematurely. God probably has all that planned for us in the next few weeks, and my thanks would be out of turn.”

Her hand swung toward him; something stopped her, though, before she slapped him. It would have made no difference. He did not flinch, and yet felt the pain as surely as if the hand had struck.

“Don’t tell me, Mother,” he whispered, “that you haven’t wondered whether God really loves us.”

“And what if He doesn’t? Are we so perfect that we deserve favors from Him?”

In that moment Robert discovered that he didn’t believe in God. Not the God his mother taught, anyway. What does He ever do? He lets a boy die of weariness, which will also mean the death of his ailing mother, and probably the beginning of his father’s career as a beggar. He lets terrible things happen in the world, and never acts to make sure they happen only to the wicked. What sort of weakling God is that, who can’t reward His friends? If there is a God He has a shaft somewhere powered by belts that run in opposite directions, making Him forever powerful, and forever impotent. As good as dead. Not worth getting angry at. Not worth arguing about.

“I’m sorry, Mother.”

She decided to accept his surrender. “A bad day?”

“I do well now. They never have to strap me. I’m treated kindly.” And then, to ease the tension in the room, he said, “I shan’t be a doffer long, I think. I’ve decided to be an engineer. Man said I had an eye for it.”

He sounded cheerful enough to convince his mother, who was eager to believe. “I’m glad,” she said.

And then: “Are there any girl doffers?”

Robert was too tired to catch her drift before he answered. “Aye, a few. Women do everything men do, except overseering, and the engineers are all men.”

“Any girls as young as Dinah?”

“No.” Now he understood. “They never hire them so young.”

“Are you sure? I think they do. Perhaps if Dinah worked, too, them being so kind and all—”

“No,” Robert said vehemently. “They won’t take her.”

Anna looked at him in surprise. “Robert, it’s good for a girl to stay home and all, but you know we need the money. It might make all the difference.”

“I won’t have it.”

“You won’t? Why not?”

Robert did not answer.

Anna was not a fool. “You lied, of course. They aren’t kind at all there. They still beat you, even when you do well.”

“It’s good enough for me, because I can bear it.”

From the dimly lit edge of the room Dinah spoke. “They also punished the girls in school, and I bore that.”

“In school the girls were punished lighter than the boys. They make no difference between them at the factory.”

Anna was standing now, had walked behind Robert, was touching his shirt. “What are these stains, Robert? Are they blood?”

“Yes,” Dinah answered, before Robert could deny it.

“The strap?”

“I tell you I can bear it, but Dinah can’t.”

“What did you do, that they’d punish you so hard as to draw blood? I’ll have words with that overseer, I will!”

“It was only once he drew blood, and I deserved it.” How could he tell her that if she complained it would be the ruin of him, whether they sacked him or not? “I swore at him.”

“You what?” Already the lie was working, for her anger had become surprise.

“Never mind. But I’d rather he forgot that time he beat me, the sooner the better.”

“You swore?”

“I told him to go to hell.”

Anna was shocked, outraged. It made Robert want to laugh or scream at her, he could not decide which. In a world like this, his mother could actually be irate at the thought that her son spoke some of the world’s language. Yet she
was
angry, and he had deliberately provoked her, and so he bore it. “You’re a Kirkham, your father’s son and mine, and in all our tribulations have you ever heard either him or me speak one ugly word?”

“Never.”

“I don’t know where you learned to say such a thing. Not from me. Surely not from me.”

“No, not from you.”

“If he hadn’t already punished you, you can be assured I would,” Anna said. “I won’t have my children acting like common boys and girls. You are not common. You must never be common.” Her voice trembled with emotion. All the day’s humiliations were in her voice now. “We may have to live and work among the lowest scum of mankind, but we don’t have to think or talk or act as they do. We can’t ever forget who we are!”

Yet after all had quieted down, as they were quietly undressing for sleep, Dinah said, in a voice that denied any thought of compromise, “I’ll go to work as a doffer tomorrow.”

Robert turned on her. “You
shall
not.”

“You needn’t worry about me,” Dinah said. “I shan’t tell the overseer to go to hell, and so I’ll be all right.”

He would have argued more, but for the look in Dinah’s eyes. She stared him down; he looked at her and remembered that only a few nights ago she had kicked a man and sent him tumbling down the stairs. I will do what I will, she said to Robert with her silent gaze, and he hadn’t the power to argue with her anymore. “Do as you like,” he said.