Free A Time for Courage by Margaret Graham

her.
    She parted the leaves and saw large late strawberries clustered in their shade. She slipped her hand beneath the largest and felt the straw which lay on the soil digging into her skin. She let the fruit lie heavy in her palm. It was round and red and shiny, with each seed embedded in it like the buttons on the back of the chair in her mother’s bedroom. Sin seemed so dark and frightening, not laughing and strong and full of sun like this family.
    The heat was striking up from the path into her face now and she rose at the sound of Joe’s boots on the bricks. He held a straw hat and Mrs Arness called from the doorway, ‘Take the hat, Hannah. It will save you getting too much sun. Your mother might prefer it.’ She smiled and waved and Hannah was grateful.
    ‘The jingle’s over here.’ Joe led the way along the wall past a shiny, dark-leaved bush. Hannah stopped and touched the shrub. ‘That’s myrtle,’ he said. ‘Father painted that, it’s above the bed in your room.’
    Hannah hadn’t noticed but she said how nice it was.
    Joe laughed. ‘I don’t know what Father would think of the word nice. He’d want to know what effect it had on you, the design, the colour.’
    ‘I see.’ Hannah thought for a moment wondering if this family would do nothing but surprise her. Could they really want to know the effect of a painting on a girl; a girl who was not supposed to consider herself or her feelings, only those of others. She turned to look at Joe as they walked; he was smiling at her and she sought words to talk of her private responses and it made her feel full of shyness but of excitement too. A clean excitement.
    ‘Well, the marigolds above the washstand made me feel warm, made me feel as though I wanted to stretch and grasp in all the heat of the sun.’
    ‘Now, that’s a good deal better, isn’t it?’ he replied. They were at the stables now and Joe harnessed up a moorland pony, backing him into the shafts of a cart.
    ‘Where’s the jingle?’ Hannah asked.
    Joe swung the string bag over the side of the cart and Hannah thought of all the crumbs.
    ‘This is it. Carrying your cornish pasty, or crumbs,’ he grinned. ‘It’s a Cornish cart. Up you get then.’
    The floor was covered in dried mud and there was straw and loose cabbage stalks as well. She lifted her skirt and sat on the seat and looked around. ‘Are we going on our own?’ She felt the heat rise in her cheeks.
    Joe stopped and stared at her. ‘Did you want someone else to come? Who, your brother?’ Then he paused, a frown beginning. ‘Do you mean a chaperon; with me?’ Surprise was in his voice.
    Hannah looked from him back at the house. There was a metal stork on the roof, to ward off evil spirits, Aunt Eliza had said when they had driven up last night. To stop the birds from messing more like, Joe had laughed. Eliza had too and Hannah had blushed. She was blushing now. Eliza seemed changed somehow. ‘Well, I always do have a chaperon. If I were to be alone with anyone like you I think my mother would expect it.’ By anyone like you she meant a man; and Joe was very nearly a man, wasn’t he? Her hands were gripped tightly together and the freedom of the last minutes was forgotten. She looked up at him as he sat next to her. His eyebrows had drawn together now and he had a deep line between them. He shifted in his brown jacket. His tie was also a tweed, but green with a light blue check. She would look at that, not into his face.
    ‘Oh, Hannah, I’m sorry. Mother has to sort out the term’s work and Father is painting. Shall we stay here instead?’ And then she did look at him. His eyes were a darker blue somehow. Was it because he was frowning, Hannah wondered, unable to think of an answer that would satisfy her mother but still enable her to go, for that was what she wanted. But if she did her mother would say she was spoilt for ever and her distress would be too hard to endure. She knew she would because they had said