Saints Read online

  The statement was full of more truth than Hulme usually allowed himself, and he wondered why he had such confidence in this boy. Certainly not because Robert wouldn't understand his confession. On the contrary, Robert was looking at him with a cool intensity that seemed to see far into him. Why, Hulme asked himself, do I feel a desire -- a need -- to burden this young man with my ancient bug-bears? Why should I tell him about my feelings toward my father?

  "How old are you, Robert?"

  "Twenty-two."

  "I warn you. I'm getting older and in the morning I have an unusually crabbed disposition. Try not to be too youthful around me before noon, or I shall be rude."

  Robert smiled. "For you I'll age a few years."

  And then he was gone, drawings and all, the library door pulled shut behind him before Hulme even had time to summon Terence. Another gift that Hulme had long looked for and never found -- a man who knew how to leave when a conversation was ended. In workingman's clothing he had come at last, a true gentleman, a true equal. Only twenty-two. Well, that youth was a forgivable sin. Besides, he'd grow out of it. Indeed, he had already grown out of it, already had more confidence, more wisdom than most men. That's why I want to surrender responsibility to him. Hulme decided. Because he looks like the sort of man who can bear it.

  15

  Dinah Kirkham Handy Manchester, 1839

  Dinah moved into her new prison in March. Matthew had started working for Robert three weeks before, and soon decided that if Robert was moving to a better part of town, so would he. The new place had six rooms, and Dinah watched, darkly amused, as her mother exclaimed again and again, "If only we could invite our old neighbors to see us now!" What, isn't it enough that we have more than enough for our needs, Dinah wanted to say. Must we also gloat over those less fortunate? But no, I am being uncharitable. To Anna the new prosperity was not so much good fortune as the restoration of the proper order of things. For Anna all was as it should be now, people in their proper class, money in the right pockets. She had had to live among the poor. but she had never become poor. It was a precious difference to her.

  But not to Dinah. What was rich and poor to her? The money was Matthew's, and the only way Dinah could influence the spending of it was by persuasion, not by right. She hadn't even the few shillings she had once earned from the factory -- every penny that she spent had to be accounted for. It was agony for her, though to his credit Matthew never questioned a single purchase that she made. She was not grateful for his kindness, however. He never criticized her because she scrupulously avoided buying anything that he would not certainly approve of. She did not buy clothing for herself unless he gave her money specifically for that purpose. Only then did she have any freedom, for the dressmaker would conspire with her to write a receipt for a bit more than the dress actually cost. The money Dinah thus saved she kept hidden away; not that Matthew would begrudge it if she told him, but Dinah needed desperately to have money that he knew nothing about. It was not the amount, it was the privacy that mattered.

  It was a sign of their prosperity that this time there were three carts, and the carters willingly carried in the trunks and furniture. Dinah, holding baby Honor, only had to tell the carters where to put down the various items while Anna made suggestions and little Val ran under everyone's feet, until finally he was knocked down by the corner of the divan as it swept into the parlor. Crying, the boy allowed Anna to comfort him until the men were gone and all was safe. Then he ran through the house, looking into every room, opening and closing every door. At last he came to his mother and shouted, "Are we home? Are we home?"

  "Yes," Dinah answered, "we're home."

  But the answer satisfied him no more than it did her. She had to go through the house with him and tell him who would sleep in each room, what each room was for. Anna kept smiling and patting the boy on his head until Dinah wanted to shake her and say, Do you think Charlie would have grown up as fine and intelligent as he is if you had spent his entire childhood patting his head? Dinah held her tongue. Mother was merely learning how to be a grandmother. just as Dinah was learning how to be a mother; Anna was certainly doing no worse a job of it than Dinah.

  "What a lovely, lovely home," Anna said at last, her benediction upon the home as she left it.

  "It's a pretty place," Dinah answered.

  Anna looked at her sharply. "You certainly are mopey for a woman moving up in the world."

  "Am I?"

  She had meant: Am I moving up? Anna heard it the other way. "Yes, you can't smile at anyone, and you even get impatient when you see me patting little Val's head. For your information, my dear daughter, you had the same curly hair he has as a child, and I patted you until you yelled at me to leave you alone. Val isn't old enough to yell at me yet. Don't begrudge me your children. I shan't have any more of my own."

  "I'm sorry, Mother. I'm tired."

  "Always tired, and yet working less than ever you did before you were married."

  That was a nail driven home in one blow. But deny it, deny it, Dinah told herself. "Having babies takes the strength out of me."

  Anna immediately softened. "Oh, I know. You're so frail, Dinah. You have a body like your father's sister, your Aunt Alice, who died a maiden at thirty-five. She could never put any meat on her bones at all. It frightens me, sometimes, the way you hardly get fat at all when you're carrying a baby, and then lose all the belly within a few weeks. It's not natural. It's not healthy."

  Dinah smiled thinly. "My body seems not to want to have babies."

  Anna reached down and picked Val up and squeezed him until the boy yelped and insisted on freedom. "But yours live, Dinah. Weak as your body is, your babies live."

  It reminded Dinah of all that her mother had lost over the years. Husband, many children, her proper social station, all security of home and family. It was petty of Dinah to criticize her now, to think ill of her at all, and even more childish for Dinah to feel sorry for herself. In case she ever wondered what real grief and pain looked like, she had only to call upon her mother and see the way the lines grew upon her face. If my six rooms are a gaol to me, what was Mother's hovel by the River Irk? Hell, that's what it was. Anna had been gnawed by Cerberus, and still knew how to rejoice. Dinah forced herself to smile. "Yes, mine live."

  Anna reached for Honor. The baby was getting old enough now to know whether she was being held by her mother or not -- it would be only a moment before she started bellowing. But in the meantime, it felt good to have her arms empty; the weight of a baby in her arms was such a constant pressure that now her arms felt light, as if she had to hold them down or they would rise. Dinah walked to her window and looked out.

  "Daughter," Anna said.

  Dinah felt an inward cringing: Anna only called her daughter when she was about to teach a lesson.

  "Daughter, I see you looking out the windows, I know what you long for."

  "Do you?"

  "You want to be a child again," Anna said.

  "No." Why would you think that, Mother? I was never very happy as a girl."

  "You want to be able to walk out the door and come back only when you want to, not when you know you have to prepare a meal or wash a diaper or give your breast to a screaming baby."

  Dinah said nothing.

  "All women feel that. Do you think men are so different? However much they love their work -- and few do -- they stare out the window now and then and wish they could lay down their tools and wander where they want, without care for children crying to be fed, without a wife to scold for being late. The good men and the good women feel those things, but they know where virtue is. They do their duty, and come to love it."

  "How is such a miracle wrought?" Dinah asked bitterly."

  "It isn't, always." Now Anna stood beside her at the window, looking out. Dinah knew what she was looking for. But he would never come back -- she knew that and was glad of it.

  To Dinah's surprise, Honor was asleep in Anna's arms instead of crying fo
r her mother. She should have been glad of it, but instead she felt a flash of resentment. What, did Honor now love someone else? Dinah stifled the feelings, however, for she knew that it was silly of her to want so much to possess the heart of an infant.

  "Dinah," Mother said softly.

  Dinah raised her eyebrows as if to say. Go on.

  "Dinah, how content is Matthew in your bed?"

  It was a question that had never occurred to her, one she did not want to think of even now. How content is Matthew ! Do you ask the cup whether the drinker's thirst was slaked? He drank from the cup whenever he wanted, didn't he?

  "It's not my business, I know. But Robert left a hint with me a while ago that Matthew was unsatisfied."

  Just thinking of the matter made Dinah feel uncomfortable. Suddenly she felt as if she were lying on the bed with Matthew sweating at his work, only now Robert and Anna were standing nearby asking each other, Is she satisfying him? "I've never denied him anything."

  "I know it's a delicate thing to talk about, Dinah, and women of our class are above coarse conversation. But I must tell you this -- sometimes a man needs to have your desire as well as your consent."

  "I remember once, Mother, that you told Mary and me quite the opposite."

  "I warned you against too much passion. It didn't occur to me to warn you against too little."

  "You were a passionate wife."

  "All wives should be."

  "You loved your husband."

  Anna looked at her fiercely, with the expression that Matt called the "Kirkham face" -- it was not Kirkham at all, of course, but Banks, that sharp and heavy axe-like gaze that could not be endured. "Look at what I hold in my arms, Dinah."

  Honor was asleep, drooling placidly on the bosom of Anna's dress, making a small dark stain on the dress. Those soft lips, slightly apart, now and then made a sucking motion that recalled the pleasures of giving life to the child. Upstairs Dinah could hear Val's feet clattering on the wooden floors -- the boy could never walk if there was room enough to run. Dinah felt what her mother wanted her to feel, an overpowering tenderness for those who depended on her for life and the meaning of life. All that these little ones did and thought was centered around her. All she thought and did was shaped to fit them. Suddenly, seeing Honor in Anna's arms, Dinah could feel herself there, could feel in a certain position of her neck, her head, her arms that once her own body had known that soft place, the shape of it; Dinah knew where she could lay her head nestled between the hard collarbone and the soft swelling of the bosom. As I feel toward my mother, they will feel toward me, my children will. Impatient sometimes, angry sometimes, but never indifferent, for their hearts will always beat in rhythm with my own.

  "Look at the little ones," Anna said, "and remember that they are half Matthew."

  And suddenly there was Matthew's curling lip in Honor's face. Dinah shuddered.

  "More of me than him."

  "Half."

  "He is half of their bodies. I am all of their lives."

  "Think as you like, Dinah. If you love the children, you can never hate the husband, however ill-used you feel."

  "Don't tell me that you don't hate Father."

  "I don't."

  "You should."

  "I know I should, but I can't. Not for more than an hour, even the first few days after he left. Now not even for a moment. I think of him and feel only sad. Don't pretend you hate your husband. Don't harden your heart against him, Dinah, don't make him feel like an invader in your bed. You think you don't want him now, but when he despairs of you and goes hunting affection with the whores, then you'll know that what you despised in the having, you crave in the lack."

  Dinah turned on her mother. "Whores! What are you saying! What have you heard?"

  Anna laughed softly. "You do care."

  "Whores have diseases ! I'll kill him if he ever gives me such a loathsome sickness!"

  "Dinah, my darling, it's not the disease that provokes you. Mark my words, that's all I say. Make him welcome, or you'll pay for it. And disease is the first and smallest price." Anna gently handed the baby back to her. "Charlie will be home soon, and I have supper to prepare. If he comes here on his way home, send him away quickly, or the meat will be cold."

  Despite all her heavier thoughts, Dinah could not help but notice how proudly her mother said "meat." Yes, meat whenever she wanted now, because Charlie earned so well. And Dinah's children would never grow up, as she did, knowing only potato, with onion as a delicacy. We are truly rich. And I am ungrateful to the Lord to cast up small dissatisfactions against great blessings.

  "Mother," Dinah said, stopping Anna in the door. "Thank you for helping me."

  Anna smiled grimly. "I helped you fill up a house with furniture."

  "Thank you also for what you said. I'll try."

  Mother's smile softened. "Will you? That's all that anyone can do."

  Through the rest of the afternoon, Dinah put things away in the kitchen, filling the cabinet that Matthew had bought for her. Then she prepared dinner, knowing that Matthew would want it hot and ready, a perfect meal to celebrate his being such a good provider. Dinah tried to keep herself from thinking how profitable Robert's friendship had been for Matthew. Matt would come home from a job that Robert had arranged for him and eat a meal prepared by the wife that Robert had provided. Even Matt's own children, in whom he took such silly pride, had been given to him by someone else. Was there nothing Matt could do for himself? He is weak, Dinah said softly. I am stronger, and he rules me. Where is the justice in that? Val cut himself on a knife and Dinah cleaned up the blood and comforted him. Val clung to her and kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," as if the cut of the knife had been a punishment for his sins. "It's just an accident, Val. No one did it to you." But Val would not believe it.

  It was near nightfall when the front door opened. Dinah was weary, and the meal wasn't ready yet -- Matthew was home early. Dinah wiped her hands on her apron and went into the parlor. Instead of Matt, however, it was Charlie. He was carrying a vase of flowers. He looked at her sheepishly. "I was just going to duck in and out, but I couldn't find a place to put the flowers."

  Dinah laughed and hugged him quickly. She carried the vase into the dining room and placed it in the center of the table.

  "A dining room," Charlie said. "How you've come up in the world. Ah, the miracles of steam."

  His voice had a strange edge to it, and Dinah guessed at what caused it. "Do you feel bad that it's Robert's money that pays for this place?"

  Charlie shrugged. "Robert had the courage to get it, and the good ideas. I wish him well, I don't resent it at all."

  "You don't?"

  Charlie smiled. "I refuse to, anyway. No, what bothers me is that I could have helped him, and I didn't. Do you realize that? A simple introduction, and he would have owed a part of it to me. It would have drawn us together. But I couldn't do a simple thing like sending a note with him to Mr. Hulme."

  "It's hard to believe in your own brother."

  "I suppose so. But it wasn't so much doubt as -- as fear. Of the cost of it. That's what I'm ashamed of. My own brother, and I was too afraid of Mr. Hulme to do well by my own brother."

  Dinah noticed how determinedly Charlie still called him "Mr. Hulme," as if to draw more clearly the line between him and Robert, who always called his partner Peter, even to his face, something not a banker or solicitor in Manchester would dare to do. It was a point of honor with Charlie not to presume on his brother's intimacy with a man who once had known Charlie better than Robert. Just another wall between Robert and Charlie.

  "Oh," Charlie said. "I didn't mean to be dismal. I brought you this." He handed her a package wrapped in plain paper, but with a short poem on the outside. "For your birthday."

  Dinah looked at him in surprise. "My birthday?"

  "It's not till tomorrow, I know -- this is only April third, but I wasn't sure I'd see you tomorrow. It's a book."

  "I would never have g
uessed."

  They both laughed. Charlie always gave her a book.

  Val ran into the room, calling loudly, "Charlie! Uncle Charlie!" Charlie lifted the boy to his shoulders, laughing, then as quickly set him down again to dance around him, occasionally clutching at Charlie's knees.

  "Hush, Val," Dinah said.

  "He's all right. Open the package."

  "But this verse on the outside -- who wrote it?"

  "Do you like it?"

  She knew then that he had written it himself. "It's lovely. Would you read it to me?"

  "If you like," he said. He was carrying off quite well the pretense that it was by someone else.