Saints (13 page)

“Then we must be quick.” And he bent his knees so his hands could reach lower, could play between her legs, and suddenly she remembered that in such situations women were accustomed to screaming. Dinah had no such custom—she was not a screamer. But custom could change at need. “You mustn’t. I’ll scream.”

“No you won’t.”

But she would, for now she found her body responding to him whether she loathed his touch or not; responding strangely and frighteningly, and she did scream, and it worked, for his hands came away from her and he backed off. For a moment she was relieved, but then she saw the rage in his face and his hand came up and down again and there was a terrible pain in her nose and she felt the blood stream down to her chin, down to her neck.

“You’ll not scream,” he said. She cried frantically as he roughly unbuttoned the bodice of her dress, pulling off some, unfastening others; then, the job half done, he got impatient and bent to raise her skirts in front. She did not think, only knew that she must not scream or he’d hit her again, and yet she must stop him. So she brought her knee up into his face, hard. But not hard enough; her blow was tempered by her fear of him and her fear of the act of violence she was committing—she remembered, for some reason, a man crying out and falling backward down the stairs and the terrible fear that he might be dead, that she might have killed him. The fear of doing murder held her back. Too late she realized that she should have hit him harder or not at all. His face twisting and his mouth uttering obscenities he hit her in the head, twice, and when she turned away and sank to the ground to try to avoid his blows he kicked her, his boot catching her once in the side and twice in the thighs. She wept with the pain, and her body was too limp to struggle as he seized her and pulled her out supine on the floor. He threw her skirt high over her head, hiding her face, and pulled down her drawers. She was naked and could not bear that, and despite her weakness she drew her knees up, thinking to curl out of his way in the corner; but he took her knees and roughly opened them.

And then there was a pause, and in the pause she decided that she did not have to submit to this, that she would not submit to this. It was nothing so melodramatic as a decision to die before letting him take her, though in fact she would have thoughtlessly done so had it been necessary. It was more a decision that she would not let any consideration stand between her and getting out that door. No fear of hurting him; no fear of losing her job; no fear of any pain it might cost her.

With the decision came a great clarity of mind. She felt her drawers still around her ankles. That would hamper her, so with her feet she got them off. Whatever Mr. Uray was doing, he saw and giggled. “I knew it,” he said. “Must have our little show but I knew you’d come round.” Then she pulled the skirt down from her face and saw him on all fours, kneeling over her, his hands straddling her body and his legs between hers, and him naked except for his long shirt, which he had pulled up high under his arms. She screamed again. He looked surprised—wasn’t she willing now?—and then her hands flew out and jabbed at his eyes; she felt her fingers as they found his face, and one finger did strike the eyelid, closed over the eyeball. It gave a little, and now it was his turn at last to scream and recoil from her. He held his face, but she cared not at all whether he was blind or not. She struggled to her feet and limped to the door.

She had it open and thought she was free when he caught her skirts and pulled her back into the room. A hand under her dress caught her ankle and pulled her off balance, but instead of falling she only spun toward him. He was kneeling upright, his legs widespread, his hands reaching up under her dress. She did not even have to think. She kicked him harshly, and the boot he had not bothered to remove from her made a perfect fit, nesting his groin like a ball in the curve from toe to shin. She felt his fragile organs yield and slip sideways as the force of her kick lifted his knees from the ground. He opened his mouth but did not shout, only gurgled and then fell unconscious to the floor.

Have I killed him? The thought was tinged with hope: that she hadn’t, that she had. She took up her drawers where he had tossed them on the table, but did not stop to put them on, just tucked them inside her bodice and ran to where her coat waited for her, the last on the racks save his own topcoat, and she clutched the collar around her instead of trying to fasten her bodice. She took no time for anything but to get out of the factory decently covered, and even then she could not stop running, she did not even think of direction or destination; she reached home only because her feet knew the way.

She burst into the cottage, exhausted and weeping and unable to speak. Poor Charlie, sitting there reading a book, was absolutely stunned and could only think to call, “Mother!” until Anna came in and helped Dinah to her room, saying, “Poor thing, poor thing, poor thing.” In the room with the door closed, there were questions. “Who was it? How did you get away?”

Charlie was the one who fetched Robert. Later Dinah would be amused to think of that: Charlie, so determinedly free of his brother, still knew that when there was real danger he must get Robert, that only Robert would know what to do. And Charlie was right. Robert was icy but calm, and took immediate charge. And he knew, of all questions, which one was most important.

“Did he get in her?”

Dinah shuddered at how near it had been, and cried out, “No!”

“She got away in time,” Anna added quietly.

“Is she hurt?” Robert asked.

“Bruised ribs and legs. He beat her. A bloody nose.”

“Did you scream?”

“Yes,” Dinah said. “But they were all gone.”

“They’d all gone home! Then why the bloody hell did you stay?”

Anna started to remonstrate against his language, but he brushed her off—no time for that. Dinah answered, softly. “I didn’t know what he meant to do. I thought he was just going to reprimand me.”

Plainly Robert was skeptical. “Come now. He has you stay, and you
do
it. What did you expect him to think?”

“Nothing!” But even as she shouted her denial, she was uncertain. Now she found dozens of uncomfortable things in her memory. Her mousy words when he first had her closed in the office; her carelessness, perhaps, in washing in front of him; her having endured his touches for months before. I did it, I’m to blame, she thought in despair, God forgive me but I know you won’t—

“Of course she did nothing!” Anna said angrily. “How dare you suggest it!”

Robert was instantly ashamed, but it was not in him to apologize. Instead he asked, “Did you get him back?”

“With any luck,” Dinah said fiercely, “he’s lost an eye and got nothing left at all between his legs.”

Robert whooped in delight at that. “Old Mr. Uray finally got his comeuppance, the fud-grabber!”

Anna was not pleased. She took her oldest son by the jacket and forced him to look at her. “You knew this man was evil and still you let her go every day to work for him!”

“
Let
her!” Robert was outraged. “I’ve been trying to get her to quit from the start! I tried to keep her out of the factories altogether!
You
stop her from something when she wants her way! By God, Mother, even the old bastard himself couldn’t stop her when she decided she was coming home!”

Anna had no answer to that. And so she surrendered, left the matter up to him, and concentrated on the only thing that she could do, comfort her daughter, weep with her daughter. Dinah heard her mother’s soft keening and clung to her while Robert enumerated the consequences of what had happened. “Everyone knows that she stayed after, but no one saw what actually happened.
They’ll
know why he kept her, even if she’s such a fool that she did not.” Robert paced up and down, growing angrier and hotter by the minute. “Doesn’t matter what she says, doesn’t matter even if she could prove anything, which she can’t. She’s ruined. They’ll all know her for a whore, and you can bet the old bastard won’t give a hint that he didn’t get what he was after. All Manchester will know her for Uray’s quean. I’ll kill him.”

The threat was rhetorical, but Anna was too distraught to realize it. “Oh, no, Robert, you mustn’t! They’ll surely put you in jail, or hang you!”

It flattered Robert to have his mother assume he had the courage for vengeance and the strength to succeed. “Me in jail! I don’t care!”

But he allowed Anna to persuade him with arguments that in fact he had already thought of. He might have done something violent if he hadn’t a wife who was already pregnant, but he had no wish to leave Mary the widow of a man hanged for murder. And besides, Dinah hadn’t been raped, she was only
thought
to be a whore, and you might hate a man for that, but you didn’t sacrifice your own life to kill him for it.

“Take him to court,” Anna said. “Let the magistrate do for him.”

Robert laughed at that. “The court? And the owner of the factory comes in and tells the magistrate—who himself owns three factories—he says, ‘Are we going to let these working women put any overseer they happen not to like into the clapper, just by crying rape?’ And the magistrate, he says no, and they slap a fine on Dinah and she loses her job and nothing happens at all to the overseer. That’s the way the law works in Manchester, in case you hadn’t heard. It’s happened a dozen times before. Dinah’s lucky—she won’t get a baby out of the bargain. I’m not wasting any time going to the law on it.”

In the morning Dinah awoke in pain. Bruised ribs, bruised thighs, an ache in her nose and forehead. The nose wasn’t broken, but it was still swollen and bruises had formed under her eyes. Worse than the pain, though, was the knowledge that her future, already dim before, was bleaker still today. Oddly, she wanted to go home, even though she already
was
home. Where did she belong, if not here?

Still, there was some quiet relief in the change. She did not have to hurry to get out of bed, because she was not going to work today, here or anywhere. She could smell potatoes frying—her breakfast would be hot, not cold. To her surprise, she was hungry. She resented her body’s opinion, so frankly stated, that life should go on. But she obeyed all the same, got up and dressed slowly, learning that some of the pain was mere stiffness and would go away, while the rest of the pain was bearable and could, with care, be ignored. Her body would heal.

And so would her soul, she suspected. Already she found it hard to think of Mr. Uray at all, let alone to remember the terror or the rage. She thought it was an encouraging sign. She was even able to write in her journal about it, albeit cryptically; it gave her some satisfaction to have it down in letters, for the writing of it put it in the past, where it belonged, where it could be dealt with.

Robert and Mary were in the kitchen, waiting for her. Mary looked a little wan from morning sickness, but still she was all touch and tenderness with Robert. They bent toward each other, the husband and wife, leaned into each other’s words, leaned back on each other’s silences, as if a part of each was controlled by the thoughts of the other. Yet they spared a little of their attention for her.

At first, as Anna put food before Dinah and she ate, Robert was apologetic. He was sorry for yesterday, for even hinting that any fault lay with her. Of course that was absurd, he should know his sister, he was just crazy with anger.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I had already forgotten.”

And it stopped the flood of apology, for when she spoke like that she was believed. When she told her brother that he was not guilty, the load lifted from him as surely as if Jesus himself had forgiven him.

But now he began, for no reason that she could detect, to talk about marriage, about how happy he and Mary were. How the first few days were all joy, and then the little fights and irritations that so quickly passed, and now Mary was participating with God in creating new life. That last phrase almost made Dinah laugh, for she knew that if Charlie’s God was money, Robert’s only deity was well-made machinery. Robert misinterpreted her smile, of course, and thought she was sharing their delighted contemplation of the wedded state. “It’s marriage that makes a person complete,” Robert said. “Man or woman.”

“It’s true,” Mary said. “Robert says it so beautifully, and it’s even true.”

Finally, however, Robert came to the point. Dinah could see it by the way he looked at Mary for courage. “A life as an unmarried woman would be miserable for you, Dinah, and you deserve better than that. But the word’s got round cruelly fast, that’s the way of it. One of the girls in our row has a niece in your factory, and the word’s got round that you stayed with Mr. Uray last night. They all know it, and they’re saying worse things that I won’t repeat.”

“Repeat them,” Dinah said.

“I won’t. I tried to tell them the truth, but you know how much good that’ll do, they nod, they smile, oh yes, of course, we know, we believe you—but I’m your brother, and they wouldn’t expect me to say anything else, it makes no difference what’s true.”

“But it
is
true.”

“I know that, and so do you, and in this house there’s no shame to you at all. But out there—where do you think your husband’s going to come from, if not out there?”

Dinah did not want to think of a husband.

“And you can’t go away anywhere else. They’ll all just think you’re going away to—to—”

Robert was unaccountably shy to say it. It was Mary who came to his rescue. “They’ll think you’re like I am, only not married.”

Robert nodded gravely. Dinah noticed the way he drew Mary tighter to him and she almost invisibly smiled and was satisfied. They were still talking more to each other than to Dinah. From the secure fortress of their marriage they were going to shout down directions as to how she should fight her dragon.

“Dinah, there’s only one way out of this, so you can hold your head up and be known pure and good and not have any more of this nonsense.”

Dinah waited.

“Damn, but you make it hard, you’re so silent!”

Ah, Dinah thought, you are
not
so safe as you thought.

Anna spoke from beside the fire. “Robert, it grieves me to hear words like that in my home.”

“Sorry, Mother.” He dismissed her with his unmeant apology and went on with Dinah. “You must know what I mean. You’ve got to wed, and you’ve got to wed right away.”

She had expected it, and liked it all the less for having had some time to anticipate it. “I wonder,” she said icily, “whether Mr. Uray would have me now.”

“No, Dinah, you’re hearing me wrong on purpose!”

“And he does have a wife who might object to the arrangement, particularly if I’ve done any lasting harm to his connubial powers.”

“Damn!” Robert stood quickly, moving the table a little and upsetting his stool. “Mother, I’m sorry, but there’s not a man in the world who can hold his tongue when this woman speaks!”

“If I remember, Robert, you swore last because she
wouldn’t
speak.”

“She gets it from you,” Robert accused. He paced toward the window of the cottage. “Dinah, it’s not Mr. Uray we’re proposing, as you know perfectly well. There’s a man who loves you dear, who knows about these stories but knows they’re not true, and he wants to marry you, and he’s happy to marry you quickly. He counts it as his good fortune and not as a favor he’s doing you.”

“Tell this Christian soul that the offer will get him blessings in heaven, but not me for a wife.”

“I’ll tell him no such thing. I’ll tell him that I talked to you and proposed his name, and that you’re thinking, and you’ll damn well think today and by tonight you’ll damn well have an answer of yes for me.”

“But you haven’t proposed his name,” Mother said from her ineffectual place near the kitchen fire. “You haven’t told her
who
.” Dinah heard with irritation the note of excitement and happiness in her mother’s voice. I have no allies here, she realized.

“Of course she knows,” Mary said. “It’s Matthew, my dear brother, who already loves Robert as his good friend and wants to make a home for you.”

Dinah was silent. She could think of nothing to say. She kept thinking, better Matthew than Mr. Uray. But it was not the right thing to remember now, for when she thought of Mr. Uray she pictured him kneeling over her, and “better Matthew than Mr. Uray” was no consolation for the desolate prospect of marriage and facing a hot and irresistible intruder night after night. She knew that it was surely not that way in marriage; Mary’s joy in it was proof enough of that. But it was too soon after her encounter with the overseer. She said so.

“It has to be soon,” Robert, said. “That’s the whole point, it must be
soon
.”

Dinah only shook her head.

“Hold off on her,” Mother said. “Give her a few days. It’s only yesterday it happened, and she just woke up this morning, the world’s wrong side out for her today. Like you said, tell Matthew she’s been asked and now she’s thinking.”

Robert sighed. “All right. You women make up your minds so slowly, it drives me mad. Come on, Mary. I’m late enough to work, and so’s Matthew, waiting to hear her word.”

Mary followed him to the door.

“Robert,” Dinah said.

He turned to her, obviously hoping she had already changed her mind and would consent. It annoyed her, but she said what she meant to say anyway. “Thank him for his kindness. And I thank you for yours. But please—tell him not to come here. Tell him not to visit.”

“I can’t tell him that,” Robert said.

“You certainly can,” Mother said. “After what Dinah’s been through, it’s perfectly natural if she wants just to be with her family. Get on, Robert, you’ve done what you meant to, you’ve done it well, now give the girl some room to breathe! Her food is getting cold. Get out, go on, get to work, earn money, get rich!”

Finally they were gone, and Anna stood at the door watching Dinah push potatoes back and forth with her spoon.

“Do you want to know what
I
think?” Anna asked.

“No,” Dinah answered. She knew what Anna thought, and hated the idea. Anna was hardly the one to talk about the joys of marriage—hadn’t her husband left her, and only luck had kept them all from starving to death or being split up since then? No, Dinah had no wish to hear her mother spout foolishness. She sat and ate her potatoes in silence; in silence her mother watched her from the door. It took very little time for Dinah to be ashamed of herself for having hurt her mother so. But Dinah could think of no apology that would not also invite her mother to go ahead and offer her advice after all. So Dinah ate her potatoes, got up from the table, went to her room, and lay down.