A Time for Courage

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Graham

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Born into a repressive Victorian household, Hannah Watson learns early of the need for courage and dignity – in the face of her father’s tyranny.

  She soon follows her own path, to become a teacher and campaigner for women’s rights.

  But standing up for her ideals brings Hannah savage penalties – and conflicts of loyalty.

  With the outbreak of war in 1914, Hannah is faced with new pressures: the joy of discovering the man she passionately loves, but the strains of knowing that his life is in constant danger.

  About the Author

  Margaret Graham has been writing for thirty years. Her first novel was published in 1986 and since then she has written fourteen novels, and is currently working on her fifteenth. As a bestselling author her novels have been published in the UK, Europe and the USA. A Time for Courage was previously published as A Measure of Peace.

  Margaret has written two plays, co-researched a television documentary – which grew out of Canopy of Silence – and has written numerous short stories and features. She is a writing tutor and speaker and has written regularly for Writers’ Forum. She founded and administered the Yeovil Literary Prize to raise funds for the creative arts of the Yeovil area and it continues to thrive under the stewardship of one of her ex-students. Margaret now lives near High Wycombe and has launched Words for the Wounded which raises funds for the rehabilitation of wounded troops by donations and writing prizes.

  She has ‘him indoors’, four children and three grandchildren who think OAP stands for Old Ancient Person. They have yet to understand the politics of pocket money. Margaret is a member of the Rock Choir, the WI and a Chair of her local U3A. She does Pilates and Tai Chi and travels as often as she can.

  For more information about Margaret Graham visit her website at www.margaret-graham.com

  Also by Margaret Graham

  After the Storm (previously published as Only the Wind is Free)

  Annie’s Promise

  Somewhere Over England (previously published as A Fragment of Time)

  For Ian, Roger and David

  1

  The room was dark as it always was. The drapes were half-drawn to keep out the sunlight which beat down on the newly mown lawn; her father didn’t like the sunlight, did he? It faded the carpets and was unhealthy.

  Hannah heard the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and waited for the chime which would run on for what seemed like for ever, but would only be thirty seconds at the most.

  There it was; the big hand at twelve, the small at three. On and on it went. She jabbed the needle hard down through the fine linen cloth held taut in the wooden frame which was screwed tight; her well-boned face drawn with concentration, her brown eyes seeing beyond her work, her slim body tense.

  Antimacassars wouldn’t be necessary, she had mouthed silently as Mrs Brennan had passed this one to her last night, wouldn’t be necessary if he didn’t wear hair oil. Why did men wear hair oil? The needle dug hard into her finger as she pressed it right through, but she preferred that to a thimble which was tight and heavy. She brought the needle back up and smoothed the satin stitch down with the forefinger of her other hand, liking the sleek feel of silk against the matt linen. But her hands were sticky in the summer heat and she feared they would mark the sheer white of the work, so she wiped them on her handkerchief and sat with them open in her lap.

  Mrs Brennan the housekeeper had said her mother had given instructions that if the needlework was soiled Hannah was to work for a further hour. She mimicked the twitching shoulders and pursed mouth of Beaky Brennan, remembering how Harry had laughed when she had decided that they must call the housekeeper that. But that was before he had gone away to school. Hannah returned to her task. Well, the woman did have round, owl-like eyes with short sparse eyelashes and a sharp nose, didn’t she? Without lifting her head she could hear the call of the knife grinder in the street and the rattle of the cart and carriage wheels as they ground along the crescent at the front of the house. Her father had forbidden straw to be laid in the road to deaden the noise as was usual in the case of sickness. Because, she had overheard him telling the nurse, it was unseemly that the neighbours should know that his wife had failed again in her duty.

  It was fortunate, therefore, that her mother’s bedroom was at the back, overlooking the quiet of the garden as this room did, but her mother would not be looking out, would she?

  The sofa was uncomfortable against her back. The buttons which drew the satin deep into the hair padding made awkward hillocks, but her mother always said that it was as well that they did, since girls of fifteen should learn to sit up without support. Queen Victoria might have passed away, her mother had said on their return from viewing the funeral procession when winter was at its height, but it should not be forgotten that our Queen could sit for hours with a straight back.

  Hannah tugged at the black dress she wore. A straight back and a face that looked as though it had sucked an unripe gooseberry, she thought. Prince Albert was wise to leave when he did. She stabbed her needle through the linen, drawing the stitch too tight; loosening it with the point; seeing the black of her dress against the white of the antimacassar; feeling the anger rise. Exhibiting good posture is not all the Queen managed to achieve, is it, but they don’t think of that, she ground out. She heard her own voice but she didn’t care. She wanted to shout it so that the whole of London could hear, so that some of the pain would go.

  That old black widow had wanted the Transvaal War; the war that was still not ended. The war that was intended to slap down the Boers who were challenging the Empire. The war which had killed Uncle Simon, her mother’s older brother. Hannah snapped her thread in her anger.

  It was not fair that her uncle’s laughter would never again be heard, his blond hair and grey eyes never again catch the light. It was not fair that his firm arms would no longer hug her when he first arrived from leave or from the Cornish house, Penhallon, which he had shared with her mother’s elder sister, Eliza. The house which Hannah loved and which had been in her mother’s family for generations.

  It was not fair because it left her no one who would hold her now, for her parents did not care for displays of affection. Her hand was suddenly wet from the heat, wet from the sound of his laughing, and her eyes could not see the stitching any longer. So she listened for the rattle of wheels, for the chatter of birds in the garden, for the sounds of life and, finally, she heard them, edging and pushing past the sound of Uncle Simon. First it was the blackbird, who always rested in the horse-chestnut, then the finches from the terrace, the muted cries of the rag-and-bone man, the distant rumble of the wheels until even the echoes of his laughter were gone; for now.

  Her neck ached from being so still, listening so hard, and she flung her embroidery to one side, wiping her hands down the darkness of her day dress. The bodice was tight and the stays dug into her flesh. She rose to ease her discomfort, to r
elease herself from the restraint of needlework, of her mind.

  She walked first to the mantelshelf, her stride clipped but fast. The mirror above the mantelshelf was at last free of the black crepe drape which had cloaked it for six months after the announcement of Victoria’s death. There had been black everywhere, but why, she had wanted to ask, since the old Queen herself had decided on a white funeral. That must have been a shock to everyone, she thought, picking up a filigree framed miniature of her grandfather. Had the rest of Victorian society considered discarding black and hanging white instead like her parents had?

  What had they all thought of the coffin covered with white and golden pall, and lamp-posts hung with purple drapes set off with white bows instead of an all-pervading black? What a to-do that had caused, and she smiled faintly, pleased that she could do so again. She replaced the miniature, smelling her hands, which were pungent now with the dark smell of silver. Her father had not thought it necessary to hang drapes for Uncle Simon and she had been glad because there had been no darkness in that man.

  She turned, leaning her shoulders back against the mantelshelf, seeing the crimson silk sofa with its nearby tables waiting to be drawn close should they be needed. The whatnots with their four-tiered stands crammed full of ornaments; their pillars looking like the twisted barley sugar which she often bought from the Emporium on the way to Miss Fletcher’s School for Girls. One piece for her and one for her cousin Esther, who would wait in the entrance hall for her until she arrived; though Esther was not really her cousin, but the daughter of her father’s cousin, Thomas Mann, that rich and prominent lawyer who drove her father puce with envy, though nobody knew that she had realised this. She moved across to her father’s chair, the one nearest to the fireplace, and ran her fingers above but not on the glistening antimacassar. She could smell his smell; stale smoke and hair oil, and her dress seemed tighter still.

  There was so much clutter; how could people breathe amongst it. She moved, wanting to sweep her hand across the surface of the mantelshelf to create some space. Her dress brushed the dark red and black of the Indian carpet as she hurried past the two occasional tables holding glass-domed shell flowers until she reached the heavy drapes. They too smelt of stale smoke. Why didn’t that man smoke in his study? He knew it made her mother cough. She reached up and pulled the left curtain back, watching the light fall into the room, touching the green glass vase which held dyed pampas-grass. She must have brushed too close as she passed because some of its seeds floated high in the light and a few, she now saw, clung, deep blue, deep red, to her dress. She did not brush them off but looked instead at each of the dark oil paintings that hung on their long wires from the picture rails; at the tables that clustered about the room.

  Against the bottom of the wood-panelled door was the velvet snake, solid and heavy from its stuffing of sand, well able to perform its task of excluding the winter draught, which otherwise froze your feet and back; unless, of course, you were sitting by the fire. She looked again at her father’s chair. She understood why he had decreed that black should not be draped for Uncle Simon; why should he mourn when he spoke of her mother’s family in a voice filled with contempt. She shook her head, wanting to be free of thoughts such as these.

  Esther had called this morning. She seemed to find it as hard as Hannah to be apart for too long, and during the holidays they called on one another, leaving cards in silver trays then darting up to old nurseries or into empty drawing-rooms to laugh and talk. This morning though they had not laughed but tried to talk of Miss Fletcher and the grey dresses she always wore, of the new desks which had arrived in the middle of the Bishop’s visit, of the Monitor’s badges they would wear next term. But the footsteps of the doctor and the nurse had driven through their words and the murmur of lowered voices had smothered their own.

  Esther had soon risen, saying that she would come again tomorrow, and had left flowers which Mrs Brennan had later placed in water. Hannah had wanted to stop her, make her sit again with her because she couldn’t bear to be alone, but she had not.

  She had moved quickly now to the other curtain and pulled that back too then walked out into the sun, feeling its heat on her face, on her hands, seeping through her clothes and knew that she would redden and therefore be discovered, but just for now, this minute, it didn’t matter somehow.

  The terracotta pots were brilliant with roses and their fragrance was in the air, filling it. She walked down the steps, out on to the lawn, seeing the dead black patches that had been the daisies that she loved but which were now salted and destroyed. How could anyone object to their summer beauty? But her father did, insisting a garden should be ordered, should be as their neighbours would wish, as society would expect.

  She lifted her skirt as she walked along the paths to the borders of lavender, lemon, thyme and mint. This was the area that she loved, fragrantly tucked away on the west side of the garden, away from the geometrical shapes that her father and the gardener had devised and edged with miniature box hedges, clipped exactly, enclosing marigolds, alyssum and tight-headed neat flowers that did not stray beyond their allotted space.

  Over here though, behind the herbs, were the remains of the guinea-pig hutches where she and her brother Harry had fed, watered and cleaned the soft, furred creatures; holding their warmth in their hands, rubbing their cheeks against the rosettes of coats, feeling the busyness of their bodies.

  Further up, by the old horse-chestnut was the thick looped rope which hung empty now. She moved along and pushed it in the windless air. It was warm to the touch and frayed, bristling with small hairs for as high as she could reach. Here, before Harry had been sent to school when he was eight and she was six, he had spun her as she leant back with both hands clutching the rope, her foot wedged in the loop; spun her until the blue and green above merged and laughter filled the space around them both.

  Here he had bowled her stumps clean out of the ground, and tried to teach her Ring-goal, but catching and throwing a ring with two sticks proved too difficult for her. Here he had chased her until she was hot in her combinations and heavy dress, until there was no breath left in her body and she had flung herself down and begged for mercy and he had lain beside her, his breath warm in her face. He had picked daisies and threaded them but left the dandelions, since they made you wet the bed and what a fuss there would then have been from Beaky, he had groaned. And then, at the end of that last summer, he had waved goodbye from the window of the train and nothing had been the same again.

  She dropped the rope. Harry would be home for the holidays soon but that would barely change the pattern of her days. For, he had told her when he returned after his first term, after he had written the letter, you are a girl, and boys don’t play with girls, especially their sisters.

  Now she didn’t run because it was not permitted; girls did not run or jump or put their arms above their head. Hannah swept her hair back off her face, where it had strayed from the pins which gathered it into the pleat on the back of her head, and stretched her arms high, her fists clenched.

  She looked back towards the house. Her mother’s windows were shut, the curtains drawn. Above her, on the second floor, her own were also shut and she tightened her lips. Beaky had done it again.

  She swung away, down to the bottom of the garden, her stride long now, her shoulders back, her skirt dragging on the grass. Down to the fernery, to the stream which ran along the back of the gardens in this suburb of London. Here there was no noise from the street, just the sound of the water and at last a slight breeze. She bent and grasped a fern, dragging her hands up the spine, tearing the fronds so that they curled into her hands, feeling the stinging on her palm. She opened her hand, it was stained green and scored red from the friction. It stung and she was glad. She tossed the curled leaves on to the water, watching as they passed on down, away from her and from the house. Where did the stream go, she wondered. Perhaps to the river and then out to the sea, the wide, wind-swept sea. She looked
back again and knew that it must be time.

  She walked towards the house, pausing by the shrubbed lavender, running her hand in amongst the bush, feeling for a large sprig. There was one near the centre but the woody stem was moist and green and she had to bend it backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards until finally the stringy fibre gave way. She rubbed the leaves, the oily flowers, and smelt the fragrance on her fingers, but the bitterness of the filigree silver still broke through so she stooped and crunched lemon thyme in her hands as well, rubbing the small leaves and their thin stems but leaving the shrub still intact. Now, at last the bitterness was gone.

  ‘Miss Hannah!’ The voice was shrill and Hannah turned to face Mrs Brennan who stood on the top step, her black dress stark in the sunlight, her small white apron startling in its contrast. She was shading her eyes.

  Hannah looked up at the window. She moved quickly over to the housekeeper. ‘Mother might be sleeping, Mrs Brennan,’ she said quietly, wanting to clap a hand over the tight mouth which could shout so loudly through those thin wet lips.

  ‘Your poor dear mother is lying awake waiting to see you, Miss Hannah, and it’s a sorry tale I’ll have to be telling her.’ She stepped to one side and waited for Hannah to walk before her into the drawing-room. ‘There’s your embroidery lying undone on the sofa in spite of those young men that give their lives just so that you can learn the arts that young ladies should.’

  Hannah stepped from the flagstones of the terrace on to the wood flooring, her feet in their patent boots clicking until they reached the carpet. All was dark again and she twisted the lavender in her hands. ‘What young men?’ she asked.

  Mrs Brennan did not answer but said, ‘And these curtains should not be drawn back like this, Miss Hannah, you know that very well, now what would your father be saying if he could see this?’

  Hannah turned and watched Mrs Brennan as she shook the curtains along the rails until the light no longer fell on the pampas-grass or the carpet. Until there was only shadow again.