Saints (10 page)

Dinah Kirkham seduced me. I had no intention of writing about her. She was peripheral. Trivial. Let some feminist historian celebrate her, I said.

After all,
she
wasn’t my ancestor, Charlie Kirkham was. The book was half written. It was all about the rivalry between Charlie and Robert. In
that
book, you would have read about the irony that if Charlie hadn’t hated Robert so, he might not have tried to compete with him, and so might have been happy. Robert was like his Mother, resourceful and ambitious, and Charlie was like his father, a dreamer, an artist. Charlie would have been a fine scholar or poet; instead he broke his heart trying to surpass his brother—who was wealthy and powerful and prestigious and is only forgotten because he died before Gladstone made room for him. It would have been an interesting study in frustration. But Dinah seduced me.

I didn’t even like her, I must tell you that. She was charismatic, and that annoyed me: visions, prophecies, speaking in tongues. The Prophetess, they called her; the priestess. I didn’t have much sympathy then for spiritual gifts. Worse, she was an ardent feminist who submitted to polygamy and preached for it, which in my mind made her a puppet of the patriarchs, a tool, a hypocrite. She annoyed me when she didn’t talk like a feminist, and she annoyed me even more when she did. For instance, in one speech in 1881 she said:

This sort of feminist rhetoric really offends me—I not only have never desired rape, I could not imagine intimacy with a reluctant or disinterested partner. To generalize and say “men want this” and “men want that” strikes me as sexism of the worst order—worst, I admit, because it is directed against my sex.

That was how I felt about Dinah Kirkham—baffled by her spiritual gifts, offended at her feminism, skeptical of her sincerity when she preached for polygamy.

I was reading her journal only because of the information it might give me about Charlie and Robert. She began her journal as a diary just at the time that Robert became an apprentice engineer and Charlie began his education with Old Hulme. I was writing a chapter about how suddenly things were looking up for the Kirkham family. Instead of poverty, they had money, and Charlie’s need for education was miraculously being satisfied.

Then I realized that I was ignoring something rather curious. Even though Robert was making enough money to support the family easily, Dinah kept working at the mill for mere pennies. I could understand that—the desire for independence and all that. She deliberately annoyed Robert by refusing his support. Every week she noted her pay, and then wrote, “Gave to Mother. Robert angry.” Feminist, of course.

The curious thing, the well-known fact of her life that I could not reconcile with this, was that in the midst of her insistence on independence, she suddenly married Robert’s friend and brother-in-law Matthew Handy, a man infinitely beneath her in ability and intelligence and so weak that a woman of her strength could only despise him. I wondered: Was this part of a pattern? Insist on freedom, and then leap into utter surrender, just as she did when she embraced polygamy?

The question intrigued me. I thought I finally understood this strange woman. This is why I say she seduced me. I was enticed into studying her journal in order to prove that she was secretly a frustrated Happy Homemaker, and then found the cryptic journal entry in 1836 that changed my whole view of her: “Today Mr. Uray gave me the gift of his love. Ruin but no despair. God forgive my fraility.”

For Robert and Charlie things were at last going well—their dreams of the future looked possible at last. But for Dinah, at that very moment, a man undid her and forced her into submission to the world of men. Rape? Attempted rape? Seduction? I ruled out the last because she was no fool. I ruled out the first because the morning after her wedding night she wrote, “Matt found a virgin in his bed. So surprised.” And at that moment I knew—not without regret—that my book about Charlie was gone. It would be a book about Dinah, for now I knew that she was not spouting rhetoric when she talked about rape, and I also knew—knew without reason—that she was no liar when she preached for polygamy, no hysteric when she prophesied and spoke in tongues and healed the sick.

Her whole life unfolded to me in that journal, and I could not tell Charlie’s story when hers remained untold. After all, Charlie’s tragedy was that he always wanted greatness and had to settle for happiness instead; Dinah’s tragedy was that she always wanted happiness and had to settle for power, fame, and adulation. Charlie had many wives and children and lived surrounded by love all his life; Dinah never loved anyone that she did not lose too soon. And yet Dinah never wavered. She never bent. A whole people leaned on her, trusted in her, and she never let them down. And I found myself wondering how she could continue to love her God if He never gave her anything.

Of course, I was wrong. She said it, in a letter to her niece LaDell that she died without completing: “Though you live all your life in pain except one day of joy, if it is enough joy, on the right day, it makes up for all the rest.”

—O. Kirkham, Salt Lake City, 1981

Once Charlie was home, once the Kirkham family was all together in their new cottage, it seemed that at last God was on their side against the world. As if they had passed some test, and were judged worthy, and now the Lord would raise them up to their proper place in the world.

It did not come all at once, but in little changes that each made life a bit easier. One day the butler at Hulme’s house, who had never let up persecuting Anna whenever he could, was suddenly dismissed for having got a neighbor’s maid pregnant, and Anna found herself free in the house, so that she could come to work quite happily; she could, in fact, almost forget the shame of being a servant in the pleasure of having no fear. The family rejoiced, and the burden lightened a little on their backs.

Then Robert, young as he was, got a promotion because he was learning so well, because several times he had improved the design of a machine as he worked on repair. Several times a fellow worker would say, “Ought to be an engineer.” And Robert decided that he would, indeed, become one; he secretly bought a book on steam engineering and began to learn.

So it went for three years, until in 1833 their lives were lifted up again. Robert was promoted to engineer, after insisting that they let him compete with the applicants for an engineer’s position. In all the tests he beat every one of the trained men easily. He was still only seventeen, but because the head engineer already liked him, the position was his.

Things were going so well that Anna and Robert decided that Robert’s wage was enough to support them entirely. It would be a momentous change, but to have Anna cease to serve in another family’s house would raise them up to the class where they properly belonged. Anna went to work prepared to give notice. And yet all the way there she felt a vague misgiving, as if she ought not to do it. It annoyed her, this feeling, for she should be rejoicing at ending her servitude, and she was not. It plagued her all day, so that she could not bring herself to go to Hulme and give notice. At last her time was done, and she hadn’t spoken to the master. She almost gave up on it, but then thought of facing Robert without having acted—it would seem to him like an insult. So she swallowed her doubts and went to the library.

Hulme looked up at her in surprise. “Already?” he asked.

Flustered, Anna wondered how he could already know her errand. “It’s been near four years now, I think, sir.”

“More like two minutes since I sent Barton to look for you. Well, here you are, and quicker than I could have hoped for. You have a son.”

It took a moment for her to realize it was a question. “I have two sons.”

Hulme raised an eyebrow. “But one who stays at home.”

“Charlie. He’s eleven.”

“That’s the one. A bright lad, Barton tells me.”

Barton could only know from the stories Anna told about how well Charlie read and recited. “For one who’s never been to school, he does well, sir.”

“Well, then, I have a proposition for you, or rather my father has one.” For the first time Anna realized that old Hulme was sitting in a corner of the library, watching sharply all that went on. “My father here still fancies himself a clever man, though you have to remind him to take his meals and he drools occasionally. He once knew a good deal, however, and there is a library here, and he thinks—and he may be right, for all I know—that it will be good for him and good for the boy if he tutors him.”

“Tutors, sir?”

“Don’t be misled by his senile appearance. Father has his Latin and his Greek, and more important he knew the world of business and numbers better than any man of his generation. I’m sure it’s no secret that our money isn’t old. Father made it all. Bought the house, damn near got a title for me during the late war through his financial contributions to putting Boney on his arse, and in short he’s a man of accomplishments, which I’ll never forget, despite the inconvenience of having him about to remind people that our money is definitely too new to be respectable.”

Anna suddenly felt the world turn around. A chance for Charlie to have education, even from senile old Hulme, was more than she could have hoped for. And gratis—for surely the master would never expect his servant to
pay
. But one must be sure. “I couldn’t afford such a thing, sir—”

“There’s no charge, of course. You can bring your son with you when you come in the morning, and take him home with you at night. He can take luncheon freely with the servants, and in the afternoons he may take exercise on the back lawn, provided he doesn’t tear any divots from the turf or trample the plants.”

“He’s a very well-behaved boy.”

“I have no doubt of it. And, of course, if he does well enough we’ll endeavor to find a place for him, perhaps in an accounting house, or even studying for the bar. No promise, mind you. Just a prospect, if he does well.”

She practically sang all the way home. A tutor for Charlie, a chance for her brilliant younger son. The bar! A solicitor or—yes, she could hope it—a barrister, perhaps someday a judge, the possibilities were endless. She shouted out the news as soon as she got home, embraced Charlie, and danced around the cottage with him.

Robert didn’t take the news so brightly when he got home from work. “What does he need a tutor for? He reads better than he’ll ever need to as it is.”

“He’s a fertile field,” Anna said, “plowed but fallow, and now I have a chance to plant and cultivate.”

“There’s never any reasoning with you when you talk in parables. Charlie’s old enough he ought to go to work.”

Anna was annoyed that Robert wasn’t excited. “Work? You argue with Dinah every Saturday that she
shouldn’t
work.”

“If you can’t tell the difference between a daughter and a son, Mother, you ought at least to try. Charlie needs a trade.”

“Why, if I can get him a profession?”

“We’re not professional class people.”

“We
are!
”

“How, if Charlie’s mother is a servant? That’ll go well when they’re looking for a judicial appointment, won’t it? Even the ministers don’t get such extravagant hopes when they talk of heaven, though you wouldn’t know about that.”

At that Anna fell silent. Robert used that as a weapon against her, that he was the only one in the family who went to church, now that Dinah had pretty much stopped going. He always brought it up when she spoke to him of the Commandments. The worst of it was that she knew he didn’t believe in the Establishment any more than she did. Hirelings, that’s all the pastors were, and no closer to God than any other avaricious or lazy men. But Robert went to church, and it was a cudgel he used to silence her whenever they argued.

Charlie saw in his mother’s silence the beginning of defeat, and he knew that here was his only chance of becoming what he ought to be in life. His only chance, and of course Robert was trying to block it. “What is it, Robert?” Charlie asked. “It won’t take money out of your pocket—Mother said it was for free.”

“For free? Do you call it free?” Robert towered over Charlie, for puberty had divided them. “Your mother continues to labor in another man’s house, a servant so that
you
can study numbers and your damned philosophy, and no doubt Greek and Latin, too, so that you can become even more useless to the family than you already are.”

Charlie heard his mother gasp, and well she might. For three years now there had been a wary silence between Robert and Charlie; both had backed away from any confrontation. But now, for the first time, perhaps because Robert was so cocksure of himself as the head of this fatherless home, Robert dared to open an argument. Well, let Mother fret, Charlie was glad of it. He had held his tongue too many times as he heard Robert lording it over Dinah and over his own mother, had kept the peace because it wasn’t his quarrel, and he was the youngest after all. But now it
was
his quarrel. And Charlie had a tongue for this sort of battle.

“What is it, Robert? I’ll only be useful to the family as a chimney sweep?”

Ah, yes, that’s all it took, and Robert was retreating. “I don’t mean that, you know I don’t. I thought that was all forgotten—”

“
I’m
the one who was sold. Of course I remember better than the one who did the selling.” Robert tried to protest at the unfairness of that, but Charlie knew victory when he smelled it. And he had another weapon, a treasured snatch of conversation Charlie had overheard between Robert and his friend Matthew Handy. “So I read better now than I ever need to. I guess I’m not the only one who wastes time. Why do you go to church so much, unless it’s because you know you have to be a good Anglican if you ever plan to stand for Parliament?”

There it was, Robert’s dream, so private that he had never shared it with the family, now laid out in the open to look pathetic and ridiculous by Robert’s own view.

“You hear too much, little boy.”

“If you think you can get into Parliament, what’s wrong with me thinking I can maybe make good at the bar?”

It was such a pleasure to see that cocky bastard sputter that Charlie nearly laughed aloud. Robert had no answer for him, and so could not speak at all; Charlie saw how his brother clenched his fists and wanted to strike. But Charlie knew that he was safe, for Robert would never let himself look such a fool as he would if he struck his little brother simply for besting him in an argument.

And then Dinah came home, and calmed it all down.

Dinah saw at once, of course, that there had been an argument, and from the fear in her mother’s face she knew it was the long awaited quarrel between Charlie and Robert. From Robert’s fury and Charlie’s scarcely hidden smile she knew who had had the better of it. So she turned to Robert and asked him, “What is it?”

Robert turned to her. She smiled at him, to reassure him. It soothed him. She reached out and touched his arm. “It must be important, Robert.”

“No,” Robert said. “Only that Charlie’s found an old man mad enough to tutor him. Nothing important at all.”

Even before Robert got the words out, Dinah had turned to Charlie and was touching his cheek, soothing him so that he would make no answer. Let Robert have his last gibe, let him save face, her hand said; it costs nothing and gives us peace. And so Charlie smiled at her, and she squeezed Robert’s hand, and the tension in the room abated. “Charlie, will you tell me about it while Robert goes out to see Matthew? You know Matthew’s waiting at the pub.”

And so it was done, as only Dinah could have done it, the argument gone as if it hadn’t happened. Or almost, for of course the words had been said and wouldn’t be forgotten. But Anna knew as she watched Dinah listening so excitedly to Charlie’s news that as long as Dinah was at home, there would be harmony. God help us when she marries. And at the thought of Dinah’s marriage Anna felt a shudder of dread. Immediately she was ashamed of it. A good mother looks forward to her daughter’s happy marriage. And Anna sat and watched her daughter and her younger son, hardly hearing their conversation, and she thought of her own marriage and wondered if Dinah would marry a man she could love as much as Anna had loved John. Unimaginable that she could do better; unbearable to think that she might marry someone just as weak and untrustworthy. Don’t think about John. Don’t miss him. He’s gone as sure as if he had died. I never, never want to see him again, I’d slam the door in his face if he came; don’t think, don’t think about him, think only of Charlie and the hope that has come to him at last.

The next day she almost cried with joy when the old man doddered into the library and Charlie, trying to look confident, followed him. God may have great blessings for her children after all. If things worked out, she might even go to church again, and put up with the ministers for the sake of their reputed Master. God might well be Love after all.

“He beats me.”

Dinah raised her eyebrows. She knew about beatings, and the way Charlie said it she was sure it could not be much. “Such an old man, I’m sure he nearly breaks your ribs.”

Charlie shrugged and smiled. “Well, not a beating then. But look at my hands.” He held them up. The palms were red.

“Ah,” Dinah said. “Cruel. You’ll never use your hands again.”

Charlie laughed. “It’s not so bad, I guess. But it was the first thing he did. He had me sit down and lay my hands open and
whack
with a ruler. I nearly wet my pants.”

It was Dinah’s turn to laugh now, and she watched as Charlie also came to enjoy the memory. “I remember you and Robert used to get caned at school, now and then, didn’t you?”

Dinah nodded. School. Aeons ago. She had almost forgotten. “I hardly remember,” she said.

“Did you like it? School? I learned so much today. About numbers. He has a trick way of adding up whole columns.”

“How does he do it?”

And so she didn’t tell him her memories of school. Instead she listened while he taught her the technique. She learned it quickly—so quickly that it annoyed him. “It took him all morning, and here you’ve learned it before going to bed!”

Dinah shrugged. “I haven’t really got it down well yet,” she lied. Of course she had it down. But she had long since learned that it annoyed men—it had annoyed her masters at school, for that matter—when she learned quicker than any of the boys did. Charlie was no different, of course. So she lied, and then realized that it felt good to have learned something again. Something that wasn’t a spinning jenny, that wasn’t the endlessly winding bobbins and the belts humming by and the asinine gossip of the other girls. “Charlie, will you teach me?”

“Teach you?”

“When you come home at night, and on Sundays, teach me all there’s time for.”

“But—why?”

She knew the reason for his doubt. What would
she
ever do with learning? She could already read and write, which was more than most women ever needed.

“A foolish notion of mine, Charlie, but I mean it.” And suddenly she found herself gripping him by the arm, gripping hard, and he looked a little afraid. “If you love me, Charlie.”

He looked at her wide-eyed. “Of course I will, if you want it so much.”