Women of Courage Read online

  ‘I thought I was making love to one of the most beautiful, generous women I had ever met.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ She flung the covers aside and got out of bed, naked. Took her coat off the hook behind the door and wrapped it around her.

  Rankin continued, stubbornly. ‘A beautiful, generous, rich woman who needed an affair because her husband was away and unkind, but who knew what the rules were and would not make a fuss when it ended.’

  ‘Rules, James?’ She whirled round and glared at him. ‘You, a man who wants to turn society upside down, talk to me of rules? I thought you believed in the freedom of people to make their own choices in life, to become what they really want to be! Haven’t I heard you say that, ten or twelve times a day?’

  ‘Of course. But . . .’

  ‘But what? But you’ve changed your mind, you don’t like me any more, is that it?’ Even as she said it she thought: I sound hysterical. But it doesn’t matter, I don’t care, if he leaves me now there’s nothing left at all.

  ‘But I want to be free to go away to London, that’s what I’m saying. I want the freedom to go there without feeling obliged to you or any other woman. That’s the freedom I need in order to lead the workers properly. Don’t you understand? Deborah, I’m not a husband, I could never be that sort of man. For me the sort of freedom I was talking about means just that. Freedom from any permanent ties.’

  Silence. A coal fell in the fire and Deborah noticed it was mostly smoke now, rather than flame. She shivered inside her coat.

  ‘And what about my freedom?’

  He sighed. ‘That’s a matter for you. But the world’s not perfect, we both know that. Think what you have to lose — a husband, a son, money, a place in society. One day you may be grateful for what I’m saying now.’

  It was true, she thought. The cruel truth she had come to tell him. But even more true if he didn’t want her. Numbly, she asked: ‘When do you go to London, James?’

  ‘Tomorrow. There’s a ferry to Holyhead at seven.’

  She could still be hurt. ‘So you knew that all along and you still brought me here to bed before you told me. Is that it?’

  ‘So we had something good to remember from today. Yes. Why not?’

  ‘I see.’ There was a dressing table in the corner of the room, where she kept a hairbrush and a few items of makeup. She sat down on the stool in front of it and began to brush her hair, mechanically, like an automaton. As though her own face in the mirror was of paramount interest to her suddenly, and he was of no concern at all. If I concentrate on small things, now, I will not break down, I will get away with some surface pride, at least.

  ‘Look, James, I want to get dressed now. On my own. So if you don’t mind, I’d like you to put your clothes on, go downstairs and tell Mrs McCafferty I won’t be staying to dinner. Then send her boy out to call me a cab. I’ll be going straight back to the station tonight.’

  Like a whore, she thought. That’s what they do, isn’t it? Go to an hotel with a man for an hour or two in the afternoon, then take a cab on to their next appointment. Only I have nowhere to go.

  Nowhere in the world that matters, any more.

  When he had gone she stared into the mirror hard. Defying her eyes to mist over, refusing to let the tears come.

  Not in front of him, she thought.

  Not in the cab, or on the train.

  Not until I get home, to Glenfee.

  8

  ON THE night she had left Rankin and come home to Glenfee Deborah had shut herself in her bedroom and cried herself to sleep. For the next few days she lay in bed until noon, staring at the ceiling, numb, unweeping. Then she got up and wandered through the grounds, or rode out on lonely bridleways by the lough.

  It had been a wet spring, that year of 1914, and she had stayed out longest on those days when a cold east wind howled in across the sea from Scotland, chilling her to the bone and making the great elm trees roar above her head in the storm. When at last she came home, shivering and drenched to the skin, she sat up alone in her bedroom and drank, for the first time in her life, a whole small bottle of gin each night until the room swam around her and she could scarcely stagger to bed.

  Perhaps her body had known why she was doing this, but her mind had not. Not then, not yet. She had just wanted to dull her mind of all thought, so that she would remember nothing, grieve for nothing. The third time she did it, she caught pneumonia, so that when Charles came home, brisk and bronzed and full of energy for his new post, he was confronted with a wife who shivered in an overheated room and stared at him like a stranger. Mercifully, he paid no attention to her feverish mutterings; once the doctor assured him she would live he ignored her, and got on with his work.

  Not until Charles had been home for three weeks did Deborah first suspect she might be pregnant.

  Even then, she could not be sure. She had been delirious for too long to be certain if she had had her last period or not, and she dared not ask her nursemaid. Only, she felt different: her breasts heavier, her skin, despite the fever, richer, smoother.

  It must be an illusion, she thought. No foetus could survive an illness like that. I’ll find out in a few days, a week at most.

  Then the morning sickness began.

  If Charles had been the least bit interested in her he could not have failed to notice, and for two weeks she was convinced that he knew and was avoiding her for that reason. Then one evening he said: ‘You look blooming, my dear. It is good to see you fully recovered,’ and she realised he had noticed nothing, nothing at all. After all, they slept in separate rooms, and he was usually up before her in the mornings, off to his soldiering.

  It was then she realised she had to seduce him.

  At first the idea disgusted her. This is what it means to be an adulteress, she thought; to behave like a common whore, slinking from one man’s bed to another. From the man you love to — but she clenched her mind tight, shut Rankin out. After all, he had not loved her either, that was just a delusion. He had used her for a while and left her with this child — and it was the child, now, who had to be protected. It was her duty to find it a father.

  But the only possible father, Charles, refused to be seduced.

  She ordered tempting meals for him, and dressed attractively: he returned late, tired and dusty from soldiering, ate quickly and went straight to his bedroom. She tried talking to him about their early years, about his campaigns; he answered briefly, with impatience, as though forced to explain difficult things to a child. She walked into his room late one night in a silken nightdress and he asked her, irritably, to leave. She did not know what to do. They were out of the habit of making love; they had not done so more than a dozen times in the last six years. She had thought this was because he was abroad so much, but the truth was, he intimidated her. He was ten years older than her and had always been cold, distant, superior.

  Now, when she needed him most and loved him least, he terrified her. Even to touch him set off an earthquake of fear.

  Yesterday afternoon she had tried again, one last time. And failed, because Simon had interrupted them. That was my last chance, she thought bitterly. I don’t think I could bear him to touch me now even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t. If it wasn’t for Tom I wouldn’t care.

  Now it’s only a matter of time. The very fact that I can face breakfast today means that the morning sickness is passing. In a month or two my belly will start to show and then even Charles will realise. Almost certainly he will divorce me.

  When he does it will be in all the papers. Unionist Officer’s Wife Gives Birth to Trade Union Leader’s Bastard. What will Tom think of that? How will he feel? Probably I won’t be allowed to see him again, anyway, to find out.

  It’s Rankin’s baby but he won’t want it either. He almost told me so. ‘I want freedom from all permanent ties,’ he said. It’s so easy for men. Just make love and walk away. Or in Charles’s case, just walk away.

  None of her thoughts we
re new or helpful. They just went round and round in her mind endlessly, like flies trapped in a jar. She sipped her second cup of coffee and stared gloomily at the wall.

  Tom clattered by outside the window on the grey Connemara pony, waving happily. Deborah lifted a hand to wave back, tried to smile, and Charles came in.

  He was wearing his UVF uniform. He had just shaved and his hair was neatly brushed and slicked back with oil. He glanced at her briefly, as though surprised to find her there. Then he took a plate from the sideboard and helped himself to kedgeree from a silver bowl that was kept warm over a spirit lamp. He sat down opposite her and poured himself some coffee.

  ‘Tom gone riding, has he?’ he asked.

  She sipped the dregs of her coffee before answering. I suppose I should be grateful he speaks to me at all, she thought.

  ‘Yes. If we’re to reach the school by two we don’t have to leave before eleven, at the earliest.’

  Charles frowned. ‘You’d better not start too late. Something’s come up — I shall need Simon and the motor early this evening. Top priority.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Deborah did not feel particularly sympathetic. ‘More important than taking our son to school?’

  ‘Different.’ He frowned again. ‘You know military priorities have to come first.’

  ‘Oh yes. Always,’ she said.

  If there was irony in her tone he did not seem to notice. As usual, his manner was calm, brisk, energetic. As he forked the kedgeree into his mouth she watched the way his lips moved, clean, quick, precise, never spilling a grain of rice or fish. She tried to remember when those lips had last kissed her, before yesterday, and failed. I wonder if he has a mistress somewhere. Is that it? If so, the woman must be made of stone.

  As Charles ate he scanned the newspaper swiftly, turning to the centre pages of The Times for the main news. Deborah got up and strolled to the window. The ash tree at the end of the drive was just coming into leaf. She could see the tiny figures of Tom and Bramble three fields away, trotting towards the lough. I’m going to lose all this, she thought . . .

  Behind her, Charles said, ‘My God!’

  ‘Sorry?’ She turned slowly, mildly surprised. He sat with his fork suspended in the air, halfway to his mouth, while he pored intently over an item in the paper in front of him.

  ‘This,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it. She must be a madwoman!’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about, Charles?’ She walked to his side, looked over his shoulder. Usually he would have resented such intimacy as an intrusion, but this time he pointed, jabbing the page with his forefinger. ‘Look there! It’s your wretched sister, damn it!’

  As she read, Deborah’s mouth went dry. She bent closer, holding on to the table for support.

  SUFFRAGETTE OUTRAGE IN NATIONAL GALLERY

  ROKEBY VENUS SLASHED

  MP’S WIFE ARRESTED AGAIN

  She read the rest of the article, transfixed. It was Sarah all right — her sister. How could she do such a thing — take a knife in her hand, a great meat cleaver from the kitchen, and walk into the National Gallery and slash . . .

  She sat down weakly on a chair. ‘But why?’ she said. ‘What a dreadful thing to do. Sarah . . .’

  Charles gave a short, contemptuous laugh. ‘I always said the woman was deranged but look at this! It’s the act of a savage, a Hottentot!’

  Deborah tried to collect her thoughts. ‘It’s not savagery, Charles. I don’t agree with it but there’s reason behind it. It says in the article, it’s a protest against the imprisonment of Mrs Pankhurst.’

  ‘And that’s what you call reason? It just goes to show what lunacy this suffrage business is. Give us votes or we’ll tear the place to pieces. Even you show more sense than that.’

  Anger flooded through her. She thought: Sarah wasn’t really free even before she did this. She could have been rearrested at any time under the Cat and Mouse Act, to complete a three month sentence for breaking a window in Regent Street. And now this! The poor brave fool. What have I been doing all this time, while she has been risking her life for her beliefs? Getting myself pregnant like any stupid servant girl. While my husband, this man, dares to mock . . .

  She glared at him. ‘It’s no different to what you do, is it?’

  ‘Me? What are you talking about, woman?’

  ‘Marching up and down in your UVF uniforms defying the government. Saying that if a law is passed through Parliament you won’t accept it, you’ll fight instead. Where is the difference between that and what Sarah does?’

  ‘All the difference in the world.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘Deborah, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Of course I do. Listen, Charles, I’m not saying I approve of what Sarah did; I don’t. Picking up a knife and slashing a painting like that — of course it’s wrong. I agree women should have the vote but we should convince people by speeches and demonstrations. But I understand why she did it. When we put our arguments forward reasonably no one listens to us. Whereas you men, you say if Parliament passes a law you don’t like you won’t accept it. You wear uniforms and march up and down like soldiers, and because you’re men everyone listens to you. We can’t do that.’

  He was actually smiling, as though what she said was patently absurd. ‘The UVF is a disciplined military force, Deborah. We don’t go round slashing pictures or setting fire to pillar boxes, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘But still . . .’

  ‘Nonsense! It all goes to show how absurd all this suffrage talk is. You don’t understand politics and no one expects you to, Deborah, because it’s not your business. Neither does Sarah, it seems.’

  There was a silence. I suppose the man of the house has spoken and that is the end of the matter, Deborah thought. But she was not prepared to go on with it. This is the first real conversation I’ve had with him since he came back. And all it’s going to do is drive us further apart . . .

  He pushed the newspaper away. ‘Anyway, I can’t stop here talking about this. I have to be at local HQ by nine. Sir Edward Carson is coming here tomorrow and I have to plan all the troop dispositions for his escort, for one thing.’

  ‘Tom will miss you if you go now.’

  ‘I’ve got to ride the way he’s gone. I’ll meet him on the way to the three oaks and say goodbye to him there.’

  ‘Good,’ she said softly. ‘He’ll like that. The boy worships you, you know, Charles.’

  A strange expression crossed his face. A mixture of emotions, it seemed to her — part anger, part pride, part guilt. He said, irritably: ‘So he should, damn it! Boy’s got a soldier for a father, he ought to be proud. I hope one day he’ll join a good regiment, as I did. He’s got the makings in him.’

  That’s why we send him to a boarding school at the age of eight, she thought. To knock all the female nonsense out of him. It’s as though men and women are brought up as different tribes.

  Her mind still full of the appalling daring of Sarah’s action, she said: ‘I just wonder if you’re setting him the right example, that’s all.’

  She hadn’t planned to say that. But, now that it was said, she did not regret it. It was too late for regret and tactfulness now. She had tried all that.

  He put down his cup of coffee softly, and glared at her. ‘Just what the devil do you mean by that, woman?’

  The look frightened her, as his anger always had. But she was too tired, too weary of trying to please and entice him over the past two weeks, to care any more whether he was upset. The way he had spurned her yesterday had hurt and humiliated her more than anything he could say now.

  She said. ‘I’m not your woman, I’m your wife. Remember? We’re supposed to love, honour and respect each other. And what I meant was, that I don’t see how you can be a proper father to the boy, because you’re never here.’

  ‘Never here? I’ve been here almost every day of his school holidays, haven’t I?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, you have. And that�
��s the first time for the past four years, isn’t it? For most of that time you were in Egypt. So it may be that he sees you as a hero but he hardly knows what you’re like. Neither do I, if it comes to that.’

  For once, she thought, I have astonished him. The dark eyes in Charles’s lean, aristocratic face stared at her. For a moment the mouth under the carefully trimmed military moustache was open in shock. Then he said, sharply: ‘I don’t know what you mean. As a soldier of course I am away a lot. It’s part of the conditions of the service. The boy understands that and respects it, as I respected my father. As for you . . .’

  He hesitated, perhaps unwilling to hurt her. But contempt, it seemed to Deborah, was the only response she could get out of him these days. At least it was a sort of recognition, better than being ignored. So she said: ‘Yes, Charles? As for me?’

  He got up from the table, clasped his hands behind his back and strolled to the window before answering. Like a man searching for the right words to lecture a platoon of soldiers, Deborah thought, almost amused. Perhaps I should stand to attention.

  At the window, Charles swung round abruptly to face her.

  ‘As for you, Deborah, from what I hear you have hardly been at Glenfee yourself, for most of the past year. Instead of attending to your duties as Tom’s mother and mistress of this house, you have been running away to Dublin, involving yourself with this ridiculous notion of feeding the children of illiterate strikers and filling the house with street urchins who smash the windows and uproot the trees. That is scarcely better than your sister! Certainly not the sort of conduct that qualifies you to criticise me, I would have thought. When we married I had hoped for better from you.’

  When we married. The cruel arrogance of the man. As though I am a child, a servant in this house. Deborah was sure her face had gone white. She said: ‘You had hoped for what, exactly?’

  ‘A mother who would not embarrass my son, at least. How do you think the boy feels, when he hears of these foolish antics? A mother who spends her time in the slums of Dublin and fills the house with paupers. Whose sister slashes pictures in London. What do you imagine Tom thinks of that?’