Free A Time for Courage by Margaret Graham Page B

which she remembered from the days she had come with Uncle Simon. ‘Where is it?’ she asked Joe. ‘I can usually see it further off.’
    ‘You’re coming from the other direction, remember. There’s a steep bank this side, almost a cliff so you won’t see it until you almost fall in. But we’ll go off down to the right.’ He pointed to where stunted trees were clustering. ‘It’s a more gentle slope there.’
    It took at least twenty minutes though Joe had promised only fifteen. They sat down facing the water which was quite gentle here, though as it sank down to the lower moor it gushed and tore over the boulders. Not far away a mare was cropping the grass, tearing it up so that roots hung from the side of her mouth. Hannah leant back against a moss-covered boulder. She was so hot, her bodice was too tight, and the stays so hard. She used her handkerchief to wipe her face which felt swollen with heat.
    The foal was stretching her neck, sucking at the mare. Hannah looked away, over to the water. Joe was searching through the picnic. He handed her a pasty.
    ‘I wonder if she wanted that baby,’ Hannah said quietly, picking at the crust which was folded over and ridged with fork marks. She should not be talking about babies to anyone, but under this high blue sky the words were there in her mouth and tumbling out before she could suck them back. Would he pretend not to have heard, to save her pride?
    ‘Animals do, helps to keep the species alive.’ Joe was talking with food in his mouth and his words were slurred. He was lying back, as unconcerned as though she had asked him about the weather. Joe was too easy to talk to and more words came. Words which had long wanted to break out but which had never found the right time or place, words which would have signalled her wickedness to the world; but here, things were different. Thoughts were brimming in her head and had been since the morning had stirred them. Thoughts could become words, she felt, out here under the high sky under all this light, so now she let them flow.
    ‘They just come anyway, poor things, don’t they? Whether they want them or not.’
    ‘Animals maybe but not humans. Shouldn’t anyway.’
    She bit into the meat and potato. It was peppery. There was swede as well.
    ‘My mother does. She can’t seem to help it and they die.’
    Far, far away the old man would be watching from the house. But not listening.
    ‘Your father should prevent it then.’
    Hannah saw that he had reached the jam end of the pasty.
    ‘What have fathers got to do with it?’
    Joe caught a piece of pastry that was falling to his lap and scooped it back into his mouth. ‘They give them the babies of course.’
    Hannah did not understand. She had seen the swelling body of her mother of course but no one would ever discuss the matter. Esther did not know either. Her mother would not talk to her about such things, she had said, in case it made her unwell.
    So Joe took a stick and, while the birds flew low over the stream and then rustled in the tree that threatened to tip over into the water like a man with a great thirst, he drew pictures and talked in his quiet voice and then Hannah felt as though she would be sick; as though she wanted to run from here, pulling her hair from her bun until it covered her face and her mind, shutting out the thought of her mother and father. Yes, she could see why Esther’s mother might fear it would make her unwell. She felt hot and sick and angry. She did not want to imagine this sort of behaviour from her parents; those two bodies close together, her mother allowing that man into her.
    Joe was unscrewing the flask. He poured the tea which she had helped to make this morning into the metal cup and handed it to her. ‘Drink this,’ he said quietly and she watched him as he knelt and passed it across but could not take it. Her hands were heavy. Her pasty lay on the dry grass. An ant was crawling on the crust, quickly, darting in a