Dear Sis,
This is your brother writing to you. I will come to the point, because neither of us likes dithering, and we’ve always been straight as arrows with each other, even when we didn’t like what the other was saying.
He could imagine Thea in his mind’s eye, reading that sentence, and thinking of the letter he’d sent—when was it? Two years ago? There’s no need beating around the bush. I want you to know that I have fallen in love with Kezia, and intend to make her my wife.
He looked down at his page, and continued.
. . . even when we didn’t like what the other was saying. I don’t think you’ll like this, Sis, but I have decided to put myself up for the army. I’ve seen men of my age and with not so much about them, going off to enlist to fight for our country, and I reckon I should do my bit with them. According to the papers, the war won’t last that long, so I would say that by the time I’m trained up, then it’ll be close to finished and I’ll be home again. Bert knows what needs to be done here, and Danny is as good as any of the men, though he would never get into the army on account of his leg. Kezia has been a dream girl, a real farmer’s wife. I went out to the field to check on Danny yesterday and found her out there with Ted and Mabel, and Dan showing her how to drive them on with the plough. Her line was fair straight as well, though I reckon the horses felt it, because I saw Mabel look around just to see who had a hold of her.
Tom dipped the pen again. He had hated the pen since schooldays, hated dipping it into the black ink, hated the knob of skin on his middle finger, where it touched the nib and an ink-stained ridge would remain for a day or two afterwards. He didn’t mind the earth in his nails and ingrained in his hands, but ink stains across his fingers reminded him of school, then college.
There’s no need for you to come home. Don’t you think that we would want to change your London life for a minute, because Kezia has told me how much you set by living there and being a teacher, so we don’t want you to do that, though I would say that we would love to see you if you come for a Saturday and Sunday. Kezzie would collect you from the station in the gig. And I daresay she’ll come up to London to see you soon anyway. She likes to do things like that, on her own.
I will sign off now. I plan to enlist as soon as all the harvesting is finished. The hop pickers have nearly all gone home, so once I’ve left, Bert needs only to concern himself with getting everything done through the winter so we’re ready for spring. I reckon him and Dan can do most of it, and there are young lads in the village looking for a bit of man’s work. A few of them, not yet four and ten, tried to enlist and were sent home with a clip round the ear for their trouble. So now they think they’re men Bert can put them to work when he needs them. The farm will be in good hands, so don’t worry—Kezia has taken up the books and made a much better job of it all.
Your loving brother,
Tom
Tom looked up from his letter writing, setting the pen in its cradle. Kezia had moved the desk to a place by the window, so she could look out over the garden while she was doing the farm accounts and preparing the wage packets. He could see Kezia now in what she called “my kitchen garden,” and realized he hadn’t lingered to watch her for a while. He saw her every day, indeed, still flush with new marriage, he felt his heart move whenever she came into a room, or when he sat at the table to talk while she cooked at the stove, pushing hair from her eyes as she put her finger on a line of instructions in her recipe book. Now he watched as she moved around the garden, and wondered about her. She was different. He could never before have put his finger on the why of it, just that each day she did or said something that he had never heard his mother or Thea or one of the women in the village say or do. Two days earlier she had gone through his father’s old clothes and come out with a pair of corduroy trousers that had been small on the old man by the time he’d expanded to a fair size around the girth. She’d used a hot knitting needle to add holes to a leather belt, and worn those trousers into the garden, tucked into a pair of gum boots that must have been several sizes too big for her, but she maintained that gum boots kept everything out that shouldn’t be in. He would buy her a better pair before he left, a pair that would fit so she didn’t trip and trudge.
Now she moved along the runner-bean row, her basket on her hip, leaning forward to clip each bean from the vine with her forefinger and thumb. She’d planted herbs in the garden, first nurturing seedlings in the greenhouse—a greenhouse hardly used until she’d taken it into her head to clean it out and set up trays with rows of eggshells. Into each half-shell—she got through a lot of eggs, trying to perfect her cake baking—she had placed some soil and a seed, so as each green shoot struggled to break through the earth, it seemed as if a chick might one day appear instead of a plant. It occurred to Tom that he should have told her it was the wrong season for starting the growing of herbs, but he kept quiet. In any case, he thought that the time and attention she lavished upon her young would cause them to flourish in a desert. Then his concerns caught up with him, and he sighed a long-winded breath of worry. He wondered how she would manage. She seemed confident enough. Kezia had not wept, had not pleaded with him to stay. She had simply told him that he must do what he thought best, and she would do what had to be done for the farm while he was gone. She said she would be at the gate every day waiting for his letters, and would be there still when he came home.
The clock struck the hour, and Tom sighed again, such was the weight upon his heart. It was strange, he thought as he watched Kezia from the quiet of the parlor, with only passing time for company. It was said that marriage settled both man and woman. He considered what it meant to be settled, because there was something in Kezia, something he’d felt since their marriage, and even more since his decision to join the regiment. She seemed like a young branch that had passed the time when it could be bent this way or that, a limb becoming stronger with maturity. He watched as she picked up her basket and walked to the gate, stopping to talk to Bert, who was leading Ted and Mabel out to the paddock. She lingered to give them treats from her pocket, then rubbed each horse with a firm hand swept down the neck. Tom felt tears in his eyes as she laughed with Bert and walked towards the house, closer to the window, so he took up the letter, folded it, and inserted it into the envelope, which he addressed to Miss T. Brissenden. And at once he felt the wash of fear again, and he realized that it was not so much a worry that Kezia could not do without him as the realization that she and the farm might do quite well together.
FROM KEZIA BRISSENDEN’S EXPERIMENTAL RECIPE BOOK
Pork, diced; Onion, chopped; Thyme, chopped. Salt and Pepper (check oversalting)
For Pudding—Baked Apples
Four large apples, Butter, Dried fruit, Cob nuts
At some point in each day there came a moment when Kezia itched to be among different people, when she missed the days before she gave up the classroom and her life in Tunbridge Wells. But at the same time, she found there was something in the rhythm of the farm and what she now considered to be her work that warmed her heart, giving her a sense of the rightness of her place. It was as if the farm had lungs and she were caught in its breath, swept inward, at one with its life force. She tried not to think about Tom going to war, because every time she read a newspaper or heard people talking about what was happening in Belgium or France, she felt as if war itself were alive too, breathing in and out, breathing fire towards her. She wanted to write to her father about her feelings, and about the dreams that came; dreams that she was running from a fire, with the flames coming ever closer. But something had changed—she didn’t want to have him quote a reading from the Bible, or the work of a scholar who might explain her nighttime fears. Instead she sought solace in the kitchen, which cocooned her, brought her into its rhythm. Outside it was another warm day, but the dampers were open and the fire was blazing to heat the oven and the hot plate above, and she was preparing another meal to present to Tom, who would surely tell her it was the
best meat that had ever passed his lips, with the most succulent vegetables—minted and peppered, but no salt, not today—and the baked apples would be the sweetest yet.
Kezia was about to throw the potato peelings onto a newspaper to take out to the compost heap when a snippet of print caught her eye. She read the news whenever she could, but always found something she’d missed when about to use the paper for something else—perhaps to step across a just-mopped floor, or to line a tray for the greenhouse. There it was again—the casualty list. The never-ending rows of names, of boys and men lost to battle. She drew her eyes away, then to another snippet that had eluded her attention at an earlier reading.
SUFFRAGETTES ARRESTED IN PACIFIST MARCH
It wasn’t the headline that caught her eye, but the sudden feeling that she’d seen something familiar, something that resonated in her memory. There was an element of the story she recognized. Her eyes scanned the column of text, which told of women who had been taken into custody, then into Holloway Prison, on account of a disturbance in Regent’s Park. The charge of sedition was suggested, and though Kezia held her breath, looking for Thea’s name, she could not find it. But a woman named Avril had been one of those arrested, and Kezia remembered that Thea had a friend named Avril—a new, close friend, a friend she would have gone to Austria with, had it not been for the war. Avril was the friend who had usurped her in Thea’s affections. She wondered whether Thea might be in trouble too.
Kezia felt dread wash across her skin as if it were a wave shimmying up a sandy beach, and wondered how she might find out more without annoying Thea, who seemed so prickly of late. Letters had gone unanswered; now, when Kezia thought of Thea, she saw in her mind’s eye a person alone in her room, the curtains half closed as if she were intent upon shutting out all society. And she felt in her heart a yearning to go to her friend, to pull those curtains wide open, allowing sunshine and warmth to flood in. Perhaps Thea had wandered close to an abyss and needed to be helped back with a hand held out. But would she accept the proffered hand? Kezia shivered, folded the peelings into the newspaper, and put them by the back door. She returned to her cooking, and was struck by the idea that perhaps she would change things around, just to see what happened. Why would she cook baked apple for pudding when apple went very well with pork anyway? Why not combine the two and see how it might turn out? Immersing herself in the creation of a new dish, she felt relief as she moved away from thoughts of Thea and the dark chasm she saw in her mind’s eye when she worried about her.
Kezia cut the pork into small pieces, frying them to a golden brown, then she added the meat to a bowl containing the filling of honeyed sultanas and chopped cob nuts she’d originally prepared for the apples. She mixed the sugary-savory blend then filled each of the cored apples, finishing the recipe by setting the tops on the apples. She covered the dish and placed it in the oven, closing the dampers a little to control the heat. There. Meat and sweet together, opposites blended, like her and Tom. She imagined him coming back, holding his head still, his nose raised a little as he tried to distinguish elements of the aroma. He would tell her how much he liked this new recipe. He would come up behind her and snuggle his nose into her neck. Then, later, she would tell him, I must write to Thea. I miss her so.
Thea sat in her room. Each day she returned to her job, and if it was Saturday or Sunday she remained in the room, sitting, waiting. Avril had been arrested. She knew that. The letter had been delivered the night before, the envelope plain, sealed and crossed with ink on the back so any disturbance could be identified.
Miss Dorothea Brissenden.
By Hand.
And then inside, on a small card, the informal message:
Thea, I do believe you should give up teaching. Trying to teach people does not suit women such as us, and I have discovered that it has had a very poor effect on me and what might come to pass. Leave it to others. I do not think I will be able to see you in the near future, so do not write or call. Best not.
Avril
At first Thea’s head seemed to swim with confusion. Leave teaching? Then the truth dawned. This was a warning. They were coming for her. Her name had been discovered, and it was only a matter of time before Thea herself would be caught in the net. Give up teaching. Yes, give up teaching that peace is a better way than war, than bloodshed, than fighting.
She felt herself begin to shake, felt the welter of emotions she had to counter every time she joined a group to mount a demonstration—always different people, always the same outcome. The shouting, the swearing, the names and calling, then the running, the footsteps behind her, and then safety, somewhere, anywhere—behind a wall, another building, always saved by her own inconsequential looks. Then the retching. Now the terror returned. It had begun to rise again when she read her brother’s letter.
I plan to enlist as soon as all the harvesting is finished. The hop pickers have nearly all gone home now, so once I’ve left, Bert needs only to concern himself with getting everything done through the winter so we’re ready for spring.
Thea struggled to her feet and stood before the mirror. She pulled out the pins in her hair, brushed it, and pinned it again, tidy. She put on her hat and jacket, and before leaving her lodgings, she drank a glass of cool water. Then she walked. She walked and walked. If she walked, if she was out and window-shopping on a Saturday morning, no one would think anything untoward. No one would look at her and say, There she is, the suffragette! They would not point and say, Aha! The pacifist! No one would accuse her of sedition, or of being a traitor. No, she would walk. Walk and not look. Walk and be seen to be a good woman, a nice woman, a woman who had no reason to be afraid.
And so Thea walked. She set one foot in front of the other without seeing, without looking at hoardings, without noticing shops closed, boarded, without noticing those around her, and without feeling as if people were simply going about their business when everything inside her was in turmoil.
“I say—Dorothy Brissenden! Dorrit!”
The voice seemed to boom along the pavement, bouncing off the shop window as Thea slowed to glance at her reflection, just to make sure she looked as ordinary as she was trying to feel. She turned back in the direction of the voice.
“I thought I would never catch up with you. Where are you going at that clip, anyway? Off to the races?”
At first Thea could not place the woman, though there was something in the voice, in the manner. Camden.
“Is that Hilary Dalton?” asked Thea.
“Yes, it’s me, old Hilly. Must have changed a bit—I suppose we all have. After all, it’s been almost ten years since we became old girls, isn’t it?” Hilary Dalton leaned forward, concern etched into her wide cowlike eyes. “I say, you don’t look well, Dorrit. Let’s get a cup of tea inside you, and you can tell me everything.”
Thea pulled her arm back so Hilary could not link through hers—she could not be sure, but it seemed that Hilary was the type to walk along the street arm in arm. At the same time she smiled, so as not to seem churlish. Hilary Dalton had been like Thea and Kezia—not quite like other pupils at Camden, though she was not a scholarship girl. She was taller than most, big-boned and athletic at school. She loved mathematics and physics and wanted to be an engineer, following in her father’s footsteps—and she claimed she would, whether the world and her mother liked it or not. So she was an outsider, and on occasion joined Kezia and Thea at school, rubbing along with them when loneliness claimed her. Now she seemed so much more confident, her clothes of fine cut and quality, her movements assured. Yet there was still no frippery about her, though a few rough edges had been smoothed in the intervening years.
Hilary chose a tea shop nearby, insisting it be her treat. Over tea, she chatted about her life after Camden. “It was finishing school that did it—Mother insisted that if I was set on going into the family engineering firm, then I must go to Switzerland, so no choice. Then I went to university, and now I’m an engineer, though the men hate it
.” She paused. “Anyway, I told my father—last week, in fact—that it’s about time I did something for this war. So I just went along and joined up.”
Thea looked up. The tea had warmed her stomach, and she cut into the teacake, thinking she might keep it down. “Joined up with what?”
“A medical unit. They needed drivers. It’s private, sponsored by a woman named Mary Rathbone—well heeled, sided with the suffragettes, though not to the extent that it embarrassed her husband. She decided there should be more women doing something for the war—blah, blah, blah—and I knew someone already in to be my sponsor, which helped, and now I’m in too—start training on Monday. And there’s a stipend, which helps, though we are considered part of the voluntary aid detachments. I shall be in France by Christmas, I would imagine.”
“In France?”
“That’s where the war is, or hadn’t you noticed?”
Thea nodded. “I’m sorry, Hilary, I just wondered, that’s all—you’re the first woman I know personally to have enlisted for war work.” She paused to sip her tea again. “Perhaps—”
Hilary tapped the table with her forefinger. “You know, Dorrit, I—”
“Please—don’t call me that. It’s Thea now. I am Thea, not a stupid name given to me by my Dickens-adoring father. Thea. Thea. Thea.”
Hilary raised an eyebrow and sat back. “I thought you said ‘Fear, Fear, Fear’ for a minute!”
Despite herself, Thea smiled. “I’m sorry. I just got a bit tired of it, that’s all.”
“And I don’t blame you. But you know, if you want to do a decent thing, you could join up with me. I could sponsor you—I’m on passing good terms with our fearless leader, you know. And I think they would snap you up. Any girl who has the stomach for a wild horse or the strength to drive a plough would be welcomed with open arms—and I know for a fact that you can do both, despite present appearances.” Hilary pulled a notebook and pencil from her bag. “Look, buck yourself up and take some Beecham’s, because you’re clearly suffering from something. Then on Monday, meet me at this address—could you be there by half past four? I will do the honors, introduce you to she-who-must-be-impressed when it comes to recruiting fresh blood—Daphne Richards. I’ll tell her I can vouch for you, that we were at school together, etc., etc., then I’ll leave you to it. How about it? I know I sound like a sergeant major already, but I really think we women need to step forward, and not just leave war to the men.”