Aunt Hatt gave Margaret the simplest tasks in the office at first: addressing envelopes, writing out invoices and helping Bridget pack up finished goods in boxes.
‘Here,’ she said, clearing a space at the end of her own desk. ‘You’ll have to perch here, Margaret. I’ll bring a chair in from next door.’
Susan was a little in awe of Margaret as the niece of her employer, even though she was a few years older than Margaret. She busied herself with letters. Though she was pleasant enough, Susan was suffering from a heavy cold that day and it was Bridget, the packer, who Margaret found to be the friendlier of the two. Bridget was only two years older than herself.
Margaret had to sit sideways at the desk as there was nowhere for her knees to go and this was not very comfortable, but she was glad to have been given a job to do and to feel a useful part of the place. They all sat together that afternoon as the rain fell outside, her aunt in front of her with the account books. Aunt Hatt oversaw orders and accounts and her work was never-ending.
Even though it was summer, by four in the afternoon the light had faded in the room so that they could barely see what they were about.
‘Right,’ Aunt Hatt said, as the hands of the clock on the wall reached the hour. ‘Tea. Mrs Sullivan’ll be in any moment. And when we’ve finished, we’ll have to light the gas. We have a little break every afternoon,’ she informed Margaret.
Sure enough, within moments Mrs Sullivan made an appearance in her apron bearing a tray with a large pot of tea and a plate of buttered toast; Bridget cleared a space for her to lay it on the bench by the window.
‘The others brew theirs up in the works,’ Aunt Hatt said as Susan poured the tea. ‘Eb stays out there for his.’
It was a nice little interlude, Margaret found. Ten to fifteen minutes in which they all sat round and relaxed and chatted. Aunt Hatt asked Bridget about her sister’s forthcoming wedding and Susan said her father was better, yes, thank you. Margaret was glad they did not ask her any questions and she sat smiling and listening eagerly.
Soon the dregs were cooling in the cups and they were back to work again – this time with the mantles lit and hissing away, one in the middle of the room and two on the wall, and the room felt cosy and companionable. Bridget packed little boxes and rustled paper; Aunt Hatt’s pen filled pages with ornately slanting blue writing and figures and Susan sniffed intermittently.
Margaret was writing out invoices which was not too demanding. Soon the work became quite mechanical and she could not still her mind. Her father’s letter, the pain and fury lashing out from his words, had cut deeply into her and she was in turmoil. All her life she had worked to earn his approval. It was she who had felt tender towards him even though he was often severe. But since their mother’s death he had become more rigid and dour by the year and now he had betrayed her, taken her for a liar by the word of someone he had known only a few months.
Her thoughts swelled in her mind, overwhelming her. She was filled with a terrible ache of anguish at the rift with him, that he had so easily thought the very worst of her. Tears blurred the address she was trying to write and she got to her feet before any could spill on the ink, hurrying from the room, her head bowed.
‘Margaret?’ She heard Aunt Hatt’s voice. She had hoped her aunt had not noticed her emotion but she heard her follow.
Margaret longed to go somewhere alone and weep until she could gain control of herself, but all she could think of doing was going into the back room. Her body shaking, she stood, arms folded, facing the fireplace. She heard her aunt hesitate at the door, then come hurrying in and close the door, as Margaret’s sobs burst from her, uncontrollable.
‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ Aunt Hatt was beside her, guiding her to a chair. ‘My poor dear – you come and sit down. That’s right – now, you sit there and we’ll have a nice little chat. Shall I ask Mrs Sullivan to make some more tea?’
‘No, Auntie! You’ve got too much work to do!’ Margaret sat trying desperately to control herself, but the tears kept coming. ‘Just let me sit here a moment or two and I’ll be back to work, I promise.’
But Aunt Hatt wasn’t having it. ‘You just sit there, wench,’ she said firmly.
Margaret, while mortified at having made such a spectacle of herself, was overwhelmed by her aunt’s kindness. She obeyed and Aunt Hatt pulled up another chair beside her, as if she had all the time in the world. Margaret could see that she would at least have to tell her aunt something.
‘When he first came, I felt sorry for him.’ Margaret spoke, leaning forward, her arms resting on her knees, looking down at the rug by the fire. ‘And . . . I don’t know. I had been ill for so long and the need to look after someone else, someone who was suffering, seemed to make me stronger.’
‘How old a man is he?’ Aunt Hatt asked tactfully.
‘He is eight years older than me – so twenty-seven now. When he came, I liked him.’ She drifted for a moment, almost overtaken by those early tender feelings which this memory roused in her. ‘Though he is rather serious,’ she added.
How could she explain it to Aunt Hatt, who did not share their faith? She had thought Charles was the message from God that she had been waiting for, the blazing sign like a burning bush, telling her what to do with her life.
‘He came to see us the first day he arrived. Mr and Mrs Davis, the people he was lodging with, only live about a quarter of a mile away.’
In her mind she saw him, as she had so often, his long-legged figure striding the village lanes, a black top hat resting on his wavy hair, his black ulster unfastened and billowing in the breeze as if there was never time for such fripperies as buttons.
‘Of course, we all made him welcome. He was . . .’ A blush spread through her as she recalled how that visit had affected her. He was softly spoken, and fixed his gaze very directly upon anyone he was talking to with what seemed like startling candour. He had been so magnetic, yet so frail somehow, that within half an hour of his being there, she had known she would never be quite the same again. ‘He was very nice,’ she finished. ‘And we could see he had been ill in some way.’
‘Rather like your own father at the same age,’ Aunt Hatt said.
Margaret looked up, startled. She had not realized anyone else knew this. ‘Yes. A sort of nervous collapse. Charles – Mr Barber – was quite open about it. He had been working in Salford, had spent himself in his work for the poor. There was a slight twitch, a tremor at the outer corner of his right eye – and he was very pale. You could see he had been under strain.’
She realized that her hands had begun to shake and she pressed them together in her lap. For a moment she could not go on.
‘So, you fell in love with him?’ Aunt Hatt asked simply, as if falling in love was an obvious, everyday matter, not the overpowering, tormented thing that Margaret remembered.
Head down, she nodded. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
She looked up again, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Oh, Auntie – I thought I was in love with him. I was . . . I just . . .’ She began to cry again, hands over her face.
‘Oh, my lovey,’ Aunt Hatt said. She leaned over and touched Margaret’s shoulder for a moment, then sat back and waited.
How to tell her, tell anyone. From the moment Charles Barber appeared, he had fixed on her. That very first evening, their eyes met and she seemed to see in his intense gaze all the interest and understanding that she craved. He seemed a soul who shared her own ideals and longings to such an extent that she was overcome by him.
And her father saw Charles Barber as a younger version of himself – a young man burning with fervour for his faith who had fallen into a crisis of doubt, needing the help of an older man who carried the same scars but had endured. He also, Margaret’s instincts had told her, needed the consolation and love of a woman. It was as if he had reached out to her and in doing so had healed her – she was another wounded soul.
‘D’you know,’ Annie had teased, that first evening after Charles Barber had visited, ‘you’ve got roses in your cheeks all of a sudden. Now – I wonder why that might be?’
Margaret had looked in the glass in their bedroom. It was true. All this time throughout her illness her face had worn a sickly pallor. Now she saw that a glow had begun in her which she could feel through her body, arising from a sense of love and attention. From the mirror looked a beautiful young woman, her hair coiled back modestly, eyes wide and alive instead of dulled as they had been for so long before. She felt as if it was the first time she had seen herself for at least two years and what she saw was a woman who had had a flame lit inside her.
Charles shared her father’s ministry and the two men would sit talking for hours at a time. Every other Sunday it was Charles, not William, who stood in the high pulpit of the Zion chapel, preaching to the villagers and farmers who rose early on a Sunday and rode to the village, stabling their horses behind the church. He preached with a quiet passion and urgency, and the sound of it seemed to vibrate through her. He had the power to make people attend on his every word. One or two people began to bring notebooks to jot down his phrases or references. For them, as well as for herself, there was a stunning difference between her father – feared, respected, perhaps distantly loved – and Charles. Her father preached austerely, sometimes dramatically, of sin and damnation. Charles’s sermons resonated with charismatic passion for the love of God.
‘This is the driving purpose of my life!’ He did not have to raise his voice: he had them all attendant, his eyes rolling ceiling-wards as if he could see to something beyond this humble valley church. ‘To proclaim the grace and the love of our Saviour Jesus Christ!’
As the weeks passed, when he delivered such lines his eyes would light on Margaret, below him in the congregation, marking her out as the chosen focus of that love. It was not that he did not ever talk to Annie, but she was sixteen and saw him as impossibly ancient. With Margaret it was different.
There was the talking, the walks she had shared with him. This in itself had been like being swept along by a force that was almost too much for her. Charles walked very fast and her unaccustomed legs strained to keep up. Quite soon it became less of a struggle. Her body strengthened and her health returned. And it was he, with his vigour, his vision and his favouring of her, who had brought her back to life.
One glowing day in late October, they paused together on a low hill facing the village. Charles stood with his hands in the pockets of that long black coat, his hair blown back and eyes fixed on the horizon as if all the world was his responsibility.
‘I feel the Lord has asked things of me which are almost too much for my frame to bear,’ he said, in his low, intense voice. ‘Such responsibility can only be the charge of the very robust of body and faith – and sometimes I wonder if I am too weak a vessel.’
Margaret was unsure what to say. She was in awe of him, of the force of him. Even the sight of him made her whole body pulse faster.
‘The Lord gives us only what we can bear,’ she said, wondering if this was true though it was what she had always been told. At times, during her long illness, she had wondered whether she could really endure any more of the sapping of her young life.
‘Do you believe that?’ Charles had turned to her, speaking with such burning urgency that she blushed. It seemed so strange that he would place any value on her opinions.
She looked down at her black buttoned boots. Who was she? For a moment she felt she had no substance compared with this flame who stood beside her, whose physical presence made the hairs rise on her flesh. She had to find some conviction to match his!
‘Yes,’ she said calmly, staring ahead of her. ‘We must not fear. ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear . . . He who fears is not perfected in love.’
She felt Charles’s gaze like a ray of light on her cheek as the lovely words of John’s epistle poured from her.
‘Of course,’ he said. His voice seemed to tremble with humility. ‘Of course you are right. You in your quiet way, Margaret, have a faith more splendid than my own.’
‘The thing was,’ she said to her aunt, ‘I had been poorly for so long and when he came, I got better. It was as simple as that. It was as if he had given me my life back. I felt as if I had to be with him.’