Saints (14 page)

In a few moments she heard the door open, and knew her mother was watching her. Dinah would not look. Her mother spoke anyway. “You’ll know what I think whether you want to or not.” Dinah said nothing. “I think your brother loves you.”

“Too much,” said Dinah.

“Yes, too much indeed. He’s as bad as Charlie, they both think they can run other people’s lives. So here’s what I think you should do. I think you should make your own decision, and whatever you decide I’ll back you up.”

Dinah heard the door close. Her bruises suddenly hurt worse, and her nose suddenly throbbed, but for a moment she felt less homesick, and she could lie there peacefully enough to sleep again.

When Charlie got home for dinner and heard what had happened that morning, he was furious. His shouting woke Dinah in the other room.

“She doesn’t even like him!”

Anna’s answers were softer, but still clear. “Liking isn’t everything. A husband’s better than not. And Dinah’s ruined otherwise.” Dinah felt a stab of bitterness at that. Mother might be willing to leave the decision up to her, but she did have a firm opinion, after all. Dinah knew her mother well enough to know that Anna would find many small ways of letting Dinah know what she ought to do.

“How is Dinah ruined!” Charlie demanded. “She’s as clean as any girl could be.” Dinah noticed that Robert, married, called her a woman; Charlie, still half a child, called her a girl. They see themselves in me.

“She has the name of it, anyway, and that’s what ruined is, having the name of it. What other husband will she get?”

“Better than him, or none at all.”

“None? You don’t know what you’re talking about, Charlie, you’re only a boy. It’s better to have a bad husband than none at all. I should know. I’ve had both.”

It was an argument that silenced Charlie, even if it didn’t convince him. He couldn’t answer such appeals to adult knowledge. He knew he was still outside that world, and his ignorance humbled him a little—one of the few things that could.

Later, his dinner done, Charlie came softly into Dinah’s room. She didn’t pretend to be asleep.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t be late to work.”

“Mother told me about Robert’s and Matthew’s little plot. I’m against it.”

“I overheard.”

“Don’t do it. You don’t have to, you really don’t. I’m due for a raise, they like my work, we can save the money and you can leave here, go to another city, start over. And even if you stay here, you’ll be free. I’ll pay for you to go to school. You can be a scholar, and never have to worry about a husband until you want to.”

He went on about his plans for her; she let him. But as he talked she realized that he had no better alternative for her, really, than Robert had. Either way she was to be dependent on someone, unfree and owned by someone, forced to accept someone else’s decisions in her life.

“Charlie,” she said at last, “I don’t want to take your money or Matthew’s home. I just—want to get a job and live my life.”

“But you can’t get a job here. There’s no overseer who won’t have heard of you, only the way Uray’ll tell it, there’s not a one who’d hire you. He’ll tell them you’re a bad worker and when he called you in to fire you, you threatened to tell everyone he raped you. And so he gave you a good licking and bravely said, ‘Say what you like, girl, I’ll have no truck with baggage like you!’”

“Who’d believe that?”

“Not many. But they’d know that you were trouble—and anyone who hired you would risk the suspicion of wanting to have you for a paramour. I may be only a
child
, Dinah, but I know
that
much.”

“How do you know it?”

“Because that kind of thing happens where I work, too.”

“There aren’t any women there.”

“Doesn’t always take women,” Charlie said. “I’ve got to go back now.”

Dinah was horrified. “Charlie, what do you mean? What’s happened at your place?”

“Nothing. I was lucky, I came in high, the owners know me and when a man tried it with me I got round him. He leaves me alone now, hates me but I’m safe enough. You’re helpless, though. Nothing you can do without connections.”

That was no news to her. But another idea struck her. “Charlie, I know my numbers, I know all you’ve taught me. Can’t you get me work at your firm?”

“As a
bookkeeper
?” The thought was obviously absurd to him. That was all the answer she needed. If her own brother, who knew her ability, could not imagine her there, no other man would consider her for a moment.

“You’d better go now, Charlie.”

“Don’t even consider marrying that woodenhead. We’ll find another way around this.” He patted her shoulder and left.

She thought it ironic, almost funny that even though Charlie understood her better than the others and knew the idea of marrying Matthew would appall her, he was the one who inadvertently convinced her to say yes to Matthew’s proposal. But he had made the choices clear. Either wife to Matthew or wife to no one, and if wife to no one then bound to Charlie’s generosity all her life, for she’d get no decent work. She did not doubt the permanence of Charlie’s generosity, of course. But as a wife, even Matthew’s wife, she would have a place in the world, a stature among women that she would never have as a maiden. And food and clothing would be her right, as a wife; she wouldn’t have to be damnably and eternally grateful for every crumb that fell to her. She would not be despised by the world. And, perhaps, she would not even despise herself.

Matthew. After all, he wasn’t a bad man, just bad for her. It was not her privilege to be choosy now. Matthew or worse—the only alternatives. So she would take Matthew and be for him as good a wife as she could, and she would have this consolation: that whatever problems marriage with that well-meaning oaf might mean, her marriage would be happier than her mother’s had been.

When she announced her decision that night, Charlie wanted to argue, but Dinah silenced him with a look. It’s my life, and I’ve chosen it, she said. He confined himself then to one snide comment about family members being sold into slavery, a reference back to the chimney sweep episode that Robert magnanimously ignored. Soon Matthew came to ask her formally. He was even more shy than ever, and managed to say everything as clumsily as it could possibly be said, but Dinah made it easy for him. She noticed, however, that under his words there was more than a hint that he didn’t believe her story about Uray, that he was sure Uray had succeeded and she was no longer a virgin. Most disturbing was the fact that this seemed to make her even more attractive to him: she was the woman that the overseer could not resist, and now he was getting her with no resistance at all. The allure of the fallen woman who forsakes sin to marry the charitable man who will save her from hell. Matthew was even more dismally stupid than she had thought. But she smiled anyway, for he was really the only choice she had; she said yes with all the tenderness she could muster.

Afterward Matthew and Robert manfully finished off a jug of beer to celebrate and left singing, with Mary scolding behind them. In the ensuing silence, when the song had at last faded, Dinah kissed Charlie and her mother, smiled as if she were happy, and went off to bed, where she did not sleep for hours, just lay there with her arms crossed over her breasts like a gate that should not be opened or all the griefs of the world would surely come in. Come in? No, escape. For they were already in her, held deep, and she did not want to know them any better than she did.

They married three weeks later, and though there were loud whispers about her daring to wear white, they carried it off well, and Charlie borrowed from his employers to give her a gift: seven books and a small cabinet to keep them in, a precious gift that she valued more than any other. Charlie—he had the mind and the heart to be a good man, and she loved him.

After the ceremony, despite the many people shouting and clapping Matthew on the back and kissing Dinah and crying, Charlie managed to take her aside and say, “I’m sorry.”

“Not now, Charlie,” she said, turning away.

“No! I just want to tell you that this has taught me something. That nine pounds a month is nothing. Ten times that is nothing. If I had been rich I could have had Uray’s head for this, and whatever story I told the world would have believed. It’s too late now, for you. But I just want you to know. Whatever it takes, whatever comes in the future, Charlie Banks Kirkham is going to be so rich that no one will ever be able again to bend the life of someone that I love.”

“No, no, no, Charlie,” she whispered, taking his face between her hands. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t you love me?”

The question hurt him, and young as he was the tears came easily to his eyes. “You know I do.”

“Then be happy for me. Please, so I can do this well.”

It was a confession; she was inviting him to take part with her in a conspiracy of truth. “I will,” he said, and immediately he made a pathetic attempt at a smile. “Can I visit you?”

“You have to,” she said. “We have books to read together.” She hugged him and went back to her wedding.

Matthew was waiting for her, not hiding his eagerness very well. The sooner the dinner was done, the sooner the wine was all drunk, the sooner the late-staying guests were gone, then the sooner her clothes would come off and he would achieve the goal he had damn well earned by now. She smiled at him prettily, and she knew he thought she was as eager as he. She still believed that a good marriage could begin with a lie, and after all, this lie was not so hard to tell, for he was so eager to believe it that it would never occur to him to question it.

The more I immerse myself in the nineteenth century, the more I value their vices. Especially hypocrisy, I am grieved that we have lost the art of lying decorously to each other.

Cultured people were all actors then, playing exquisite roles, creating themselves with every word they uttered. Parties were improvisational plays, with scenes and acts, with curtains and encores. Even home life was lived as high drama. Not the low comedy we rustics act out now.
Our
conversation is modelled on the inanity of the talk show host;
our
thoughts are created for us by pollsters and journalists, who do not respect the role we
wish
to play, but instead distill us into percentiles or cast us as good guys and bad guys in a melodrama in which the journalist himself is always the knight in white armor, the man in the white hat.

We are still actors, but the play is melodrama now, out of our control, acted by amateurs who are such fools as to believe the parts they play. Give me again the days of glorious hypocrites—they knew they were artificial, but the artifice was beautiful.

—O. Kirkham, Salt Lake City, 1981

Robert got bored easily in meetings. He always had. But now it was getting worse, so that the meeting had scarcely begun when he got up and left the room and went out the back into the courtyard. Matt looked at him questioningly when he got up, but Robert only grinned and Matt kept his seat. The speaker droned on.

Even outside, Robert could hear him. Rights of man. Free association. Trades unions. The national federation of labor. God-given dignity for all men.

Well, Robert thought, if it’s God-given, why the hell hasn’t God taken some steps to spread it around?

The courtyard was fairly clean, but that only meant that the stench was barely endurable. A child came out of one of the inner-facing cottages and squatted in a corner of the yard, unperturbed at Robert’s frank observation. This is the common man, Robert thought. Give them all the rights they clamor for, and what will they do with them? He tried to imagine Anna letting him shit in a corner, even when he was a child. Unthinkable. Some people were born low, Robert knew, for all that the theorists shouted about equality. Most people, perhaps. Most people are exactly where they belong in life. Only a few of the rich deserve to be low—those who squander their fortunes, as Robert’s grandfather had done. And only a few of the poor deserve to be rich—those with the courage and drive to achieve wealth.

He looked up and saw no stars. In Manchester there were no stars to be seen, the smoke loomed over the city, preparing to pounce. At times like this it felt heavy and oppressive.

But it was different in the factory. There the smoke was closer tied to the fire, and Robert tended his steam engines and gave power to the machines. Smoke was only a sign that the power was coming. It was the dark face of the fire, and Robert breathed in the smell of it as other men drank their liquor.

Other men drank their liquor; other men sat in political meetings and believed in all the talk of votes for the workingman, power for the people. In America, maybe, the common man might have some strength; but then, America was a land of savages. Robert had hoped once that when the Parliament was reformed, some of the power might filter down to the people. But of course that could never happen. Now instead of boroughs being in the pockets of great lords, they were in the pockets of substantial business interests; great money had taken the place of great names, that’s all. Workingmen could get together all they liked. They could make fiery speeches and talk rashly of strikes and whisper cautiously of revolution, but it would come to nothing.

I will not come to nothing, Robert whispered. I have the power of coalfire in my blood, and I am as fit to run the gears of England as any man alive. Why should I destroy myself to keep fellowship with these pitiful supporters of a doomed cause? If the power goes to the men with money, then what I need is money. And so I’ll get it.

“You’re taking a long time plucking daisies, Robert,” Matthew said from behind him.

Robert was startled, but he only turned calmly and said. “Didn’t come for that.”

“They don’t like the way you leave so much these days during meetings.”

“Don’t they now?”

“Makes them think you’re off with the police.”

“Neither the police nor the militia could find their arse with their hands tied behind their back.”

Matt laughed. It was what Matt was best at. Robert found himself getting irritated. Matt never knew when a thing wasn’t really funny.

“So what
do
you do out here?”

“Plan what to do with my second thousand pounds.”

“What happened to the first?”

“If I had the first thousand, I wouldn’t have to sit out here dreaming, now, would I?”

“We’re both dreamers, Robert.”

Maybe you are, but I’m a maker.

Matthew thought for a moment. He always did that, Robert reflected, before he said something unusually stupid. “We ought to be more like your brother Charlie.”

“Charlie! And how should
we
be like a little boy?”

“Well, he makes good wages, Robert.”

“He makes clerk’s wages. If he’s very, very good, when he’s fifty he’ll be a partner in the firm and he’ll earn only five hundred in a year, maybe even a thousand, if he’s very lucky.”

“You’re right. I’d be ashamed to have so little.”

“Mark me, Matthew. Five years from now I’ll have more than enough to buy Charlie’s little counting house out of my household budget.”

“And when you’ve bought it, you’ll sack him?”

Robert was appalled. “My own brother?”

“Oh, don’t get your Kirkham face on, it’s what I like least about you—and Dinah, too. When she gets her Kirkham face I know there’ll be no peace until I give in to her. Yes, your own brother. You know you detest him.”

“A brother’s a brother.”

“So you don’t sack him. So you give him a big raise in wages. He’ll know it came from you, and it’ll gall him all the more.”

Matthew was getting uncomfortably close to Robert’s unspoken wishes. For a fool, Matthew was sometimes wise. Never, though, when it was convenient. “Who gives a damn for Charlie? It’s Parliament I’m after. Not these silly meetings.”

Matthew grinned. “Parliament? To bomb it, Mr. Guyfawkes?”

“To sit in it,” Robert answered testily.

“You, a common engineer with greasy hands,
you
sit in Parliament? While you’re at it, why not wish to be king?”

“The king’s an old fart who loses power every day.”

Matt looked terrified. “My Lord, Robert, what are you trying to do? Get us transported? I hear Australia isn’t heaven, you know.”

“I’m just telling you, Matt. It’s time for me to move on. Move up. The meetings are getting me nowhere. I’ve been to the last of them. I won’t be back.”

“I thought you believed in the rights of the workingman.”

“The workingman will have rights when the rich men give it to them. When I’m rich, I’ll fight to give the vote to the poor. But while I’m poor, I can’t do a damn thing for anybody.”

“I didn’t know you had a rich uncle who was leaving it all to you.”

“Out your nose, Matt. You’re still my friend, whether you believe in me now or not. In six months, if you want a piece of what I’m doing, you just say so and you’re in. And in five years I can promise you there isn’t a rich house in Manchester we won’t be welcome in.”

“Go on then, Robert. I thought you were being serious.”

“When I walk into the Exchange the price of cotton will rise.”

Matt laughed, punched Robert in the arm. “Come back in, Robert. Everyone has dreams, but you can still keep fellowship.”

“I’m not going in, Matt. Never again.”

“Well, for all that, you’ll have to go through the cottage to get home from here.”

“Maybe
you
will.” Robert walked across the court and began climbing up the drainpipe. The pipe was old and most of the water circumvented the drainage system anyway, but the pipe held well enough and in a few moments Robert was sitting on the edge of the roof, regarding Matthew with a smile.

“Come down, you silly fool!” Matt was laughing, of course.

I have ascended out of hell, and you’re laughing. Robert got up and began going over the roof.

“Where are you going?”

“To the railroad, Matey! Coming?”

“No! Come down!” But Robert did not come down. So Matthew also scrambled up the drainpipe and joined Robert on the roof. “Hope the constables don’t see us here,” he said, out of breath. “They’ll have us as dancers sure enough.”

“I don’t plan to stay up here long.” To prove his point, Robert went to the street side of the roof, let himself slide out off the edge of the roof, dangled for a few moments, then dropped to the ground and rolled.

He looked up at Matthew, who was standing near the roof’s edge, shaking his head.

“Good God,” Matthew said. “Didn’t you break your leg?”

“Just roll when you hit bottom, and you’ll come up fine.”

Matthew tried it, much more awkwardly but well enough that he broke no bones in the fall. “At least I think nothing’s broken.”

“If you can think about it, nothing’s broken.”

They made their way to the railroad, then. It was the Manchester-Birmingham line. It came in as far as Store Street and stopped. The left track was empty; on the right track a train was standing idle. It was half-loaded with cargo. Because they were both engineers, they went at once to the steam engine sitting on its little platform and wheels.

“Pitiful little thing, isn’t it?” Matt said, stroking the boiler.

“Hasn’t enough guts to push a cow out of the way. But it moves. And pulls a load.”

“There’s no future in them,” Matthew said. “Hauling coal, maybe. But the canals are cheaper and can carry more.”

Robert said nothing. He just fondled the engine, measured the gauge of the track with his step, compared weights and tolerances with the huge steam engines at the factory.

“And it’s impractical,” Matt went on. “Has to carry its own fuel with it. The farther you go, the more coal you have to bring, and so if you go any distance at all, you can’t carry any cargo above the engine’s fuel supply.”

Robert only nodded. He knew better. He knew in his mind the shape of an engine that would be light enough to move yet strong enough to pull a train three times the size of this one, and probably go faster to boot.

“There’ll come a day,” Robert finally said, “when a train will go twenty-five miles an hour, carrying more load than a canal boat.”

“And what difference will it make? People will still be starving in Manchester, no matter how fast the trains move.”

Robert looked at Matt, wondering how his good friend could be such a fool. “You’re married to my sister, Matt.”

“And you’re married to mine.”

“Do you plan for Dinah to be an engineer’s wife, always? When you’re done fighting for the six points of the charter, when the Grand National’s formed and taken over England, she’ll still be an engineer’s wife, won’t she?”

“There’s nothing finer than to be the wife of a workingman.”

“Do you believe that?”

Matt nodded defiantly. “With all my heart, Rob.”

“Start using your head, then. When
your
sister is a rich man’s wife, then by God my sister had better be, too.”

“When God leaves us money in our boots, then our wives will be rich.”

“In a year you’ll come to me. You’ll want a part of what I have, Matt. And do you know what I’ll say to you?”

Matt tried to take it as a joke, and laughed as he said, “No.”

“I’ll say yes. But not for your sake, Matt. For Dinah’s.”

“Well, just so I live in comfort all my life.” Matthew laughed, but soon realized that Robert didn’t share his mirth. He fell silent. They began to walk home together in darkness. Up Store Street to Great Ancoats, then up Jersey to Prussia. They talked about a lot of things; about nothing. When they neared Matt’s cottage, he started talking about Dinah.

“She’s not lively, you know, Rob,” he said. “Not lively at all.”

Robert could not figure what Matt meant by lively.

“She’s cheery enough with little Val, of course. And she’s glad enough about expecting another. You knew that she was that way again, I expect.”

“I knew.”

“But she doesn’t seem to like it, you know?”

“Like what?”

“The blanket hornpipe, man, must I spell it for you? She avoids me. I thought when I married her that she’d be lively.”

“It’s not a thing a brother ought to talk about,” Robert said.

“For a freethinker you’re a bit of a prude, Robert. I had just thought that what with the overseer and all, she’d be glad to have a younger man in her bed. But do you know? I think she was a virgin when I married her.”

Robert stopped in the road. “She damn well
was
a virgin.”

“So I said, Rob. So I said.”

“I mean she damn well was. I told you so at the time.”

“Well, a brother has to say such a thing, so I didn’t quite take you at your word.” Matt saw immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, Robert.”

“Go home to my sister, Matt, and treat her kindly. The girl you married was clean.”

“I don’t beat her, you know.”

“She’s a lady, Matt. You treat her with respect. You don’t go thinking evil things about her.”

Matt turned resentful. “She’s
my
wife, you know.”

“She’s my sister, Matt, and she was
that
before she knew you.”

Sarcastically Matt answered, “Oh, yes, I know how thick you Kirkhams are. No one was ever a family except you. Well, Rob, if you’re such a loving hutful of happiness, why hasn’t your brother set you up for your railroad scheme?”

“My brother! Charlie’s earning a wage, he doesn’t own the money that passes through his books.”

“But Hulme does. And Charlie knows him.”

“He knew the old one. The old one’s dead.”

“I’m sure Charlie has a thousand excuses. But he knows young Hulme, and he could introduce you if he wanted.”

“I haven’t asked him.”

“That’s what I figured. Oh, you Kirkhams are such a lovey crew, but you can’t even ask your brother to introduce you to his friend. Or is it that you don’t believe that your ideas are really good enough to get capital?”

Robert knew how Matthew was manipulating him—Matthew was too clumsy to be subtle—but Robert also knew that he was right. Why
hadn’t
he asked Charlie? It simply hadn’t occurred to him, that’s all. But why not try now? If Hulme was at all clever, he’d know the value of what Robert had to offer. A simple introduction would be enough. Taking anything from Charlie’s unforgivingly generous hands would be galling—but he’d put up with a lot more gall than that if it let him build the engines he dreamed of.

“I see,” Matthew said. “You’re afraid of Charlie.”

“I am,” Robert said. “Afraid that someday I’ll lose control and go to hell as a fratricide.”

“You aren’t afraid of Charlie and you don’t believe in hell, Robert Kirkham. But you’ll never talk to Charlie about it.”

“I’ll talk to him tonight. See if I don’t end up talking all this through with Mr. Hulme.”

“I was joking, Robert. There isn’t a hope in the world of Hulme going into business with the son of his former servant.”