A Woman of Courage by J.H. Fletcher Page B

with a river, green and shining, at the bottom. She’d never seen anything like it. She stood and marvelled at this scented wonderland of colour: the deep gorge, the grey stone cliffs flecked with orange and brown lichen, with trees growing and the water shining far down; the combined scents of freshness and water and vegetation made her head spin. Not only her head was affected; she felt something close to pain deep inside her, as though a hard and protective layer was being peeled away from her heart. She had big-city memories, of London and Birmingham. Her rare trips to the country had been to a neat and tidy English world. She had never known anywhere like this existed and stared now as though her eyes might fall out. She couldn’t hang about too long or she’d be in trouble, yet knew that the images of tumbled rocks and water would stay with her forever. A sense of wonder and excitement had entered her life.
    After that she went there when she could. To stand there, the only sound the wind and the calling of birds, was to enter into a special place. It reminded her of Miss Anderson and the funny-shaped words on the old map. Here be dragons.
    â€˜Maybe they got real dragons down there,’ she told the trees that surrounded her, but if the trees knew they weren’t saying. It was exciting, though, to think of all the might-bes there were outside the confines of the farm.
    â€˜One day I’ll get away from that place,’ she told the trees. ‘Then I’ll show them.’
    All the same, it wasn’t always easy to believe in a future. They’d been told that when they were fifteen they’d be sent away, the boys to do farm work, the girls to be domestics.
    â€˜We got any choice?’
    Quick as quick, the ruler cracked her knuckles; Mrs Wilmot thought she was cheeky to ask such a thing. ‘Choices are not part of your future, Brand. You’ll go where you’re sent and be thankful for everything Northcote Farm has done for you.’
    Hilary thought differently. Like all the children, there were days when she felt abandoned, like she was being punished for something she hadn’t done. Yet something in her knew that she was different from the others. She didn’t know why, only that she had a force in her the other kids didn’t have. She was determined to prove to the world and herself that she was a survivor.
    Over the years her awareness of her strength became a forged weapon. She would survive – yes, but much more than that. She would triumph. Somehow; anyhow. People who looked down on her now would learn their mistake.
    She discovered a battered board game. Snakes and ladders. She traced the patterns, barely decipherable, on the board: the ladders leading her up and up, the snakes that did all they could to bring her crashing down again. She ground her thumb into the heads of the snakes.
    â€˜I’ll show them!’ she said. ‘I’ll smash them to pieces. You’ll see.’
    7
    Hilary would not have known when her birthday was had Miss Anderson, back in England, not told her. Not that it made any difference: her fourteenth birthday on the thirtieth of December 1954, like all the earlier ones, passed unacknowledged by anyone.
    But at least I know, she thought. At least I know I’m real. In a dump like this, with no feeling of belonging to anyone or anything, that was important.
    She studied her reflection in a mirror in what Captain Barnstable called the ablutions block. Her face looked much as it always had; if there were changes she couldn’t see them, but in the last year her body had certainly changed.
    She shared her secret with her reflection, leaning close so that her breath bloomed on the glass. ‘I am a woman,’ she said.
    Or getting there. She knew it and the boys did too. They weren’t allowed to mix with the boys at the farm – Captain Barnstable was hot on that – but at the state school down the road