comin’. When you finish that you can work on these.’ She patted a pile of bonnets in various stages of construction that she had placed on a table between them. ‘I’ll trim ’em later. You got any questions I’ll be in the shop. Got to open for the afternoon.’
It had grown warm, with the sun high in the sky and the porch less shaded. Honor had not been alone much since landing in America, and was glad to sit still on a bright spring afternoon with familiar work to do but nothing more expected of her. She would have liked a cottage garden to look at, with drifting borders of flowers such as her mother grew – lupins and delphiniums and columbine and love-in-a-mist and forget-me-nots. She didn’t know if any of these flowers even grew in America, or if Americans cultivated that sort of garden. She suspected not – it was not practical, especially here, where society was still being hewn from the wilderness, and energy was directed towards survival rather than decoration. Mind you – she surveyed the pile of bonnets Belle had left her – Ohio women did allow themselves some frivolity in their headwear: the bonnets were in brightly coloured ginghams and chintz.
She finished the cream bonnet and picked up another, of pale green fabric dotted with tiny daisies, and a brim that could be folded back to reveal another colour – tan in this case. Honor would have expected pink, but she was not about to suggest so. As she worked on the second bonnet, the steady, familiar rhythm of sewing took over, its repetition meditative, freeing her to her thoughts rather as Meeting for Worship did. She felt her shoulders begin to sink, the tension she had been carrying with her since leaving England easing a little. Reaching the end of the thread, she let her hands rest on the bonnet in her lap and closed her eyes. That calm, and her solitude, gave her the space in which to think: of Samuel telling her he loved someone else, and her decision to unmoor herself from Dorset; of her sister’s death leaving her so alone in a strange place. Honor at last began to cry, painful sobs reminiscent of the heaves she had suffered on board the Adventurer.
The relief of her tears did not last, however. In between her muffled gasps, a sense came over her, just as it had on the road from Hudson to Wellington, that she was not alone. Honor glanced behind her, but Belle was not in the doorway or the kitchen; indeed, she could hear her voice back in the shop. And she could see no one in any of the nearby yards. Then she heard behind her, in the lean-to at the side of the house, the sound of a log falling from the woodpile.
It could be a dog, she thought, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Or one of those animals we don’t have, a possum or a porcupine or a raccoon. But she knew they were unlikely to knock over a log. And she knew, though she could not say how, that the presence she felt now, and had felt on the road, was human.
Honor had never thought of herself as a brave person. Until coming to America, her mettle had not really been tested. Now, however, she resisted the urge to fetch Belle. Instead she put the bonnet aside, rose from her chair, and crept down the back steps. Hesitating would not help, she knew. She took a breath, held it, and walked over to the lean-to to look in.
The light reached only a foot or two inside the woodshed; then it was dim, leading to darkness. For a moment Honor could see nothing as her eyes tried to adjust. Then she made out wood stacked neat and high on the right; on the left there was a narrow gap between wood and wall, for access to the stack. In that gap stood a black man. Honor sucked in a shocked breath on top of the one she was holding, then let it out in a sudden exhalation. She stared at him. He was of medium height and build, with fuzzy hair and wide cheeks. He was barefoot, his clothes worn and dirty. That was all she could take in, or knew how to take in, for she was not familiar enough with Negro features to be able to gauge and compare and describe them. She did not know if he was frightened or angry or resigned. To her he simply looked black.
She did not know what to say, or if she should speak, so she did not, but stepped backwards. Then she hurried to the porch, and began putting her sewing things back into her box. Piling the bonnets on top, she picked up everything and took it inside.
Belle did not seem surprised to see her. ‘Heat got to you?’ she said as she adjusted a hat on a customer, sharpening the angle before sticking in a hat pin. Both women studied the effect in the mirror. ‘That’s better, ain’t it? Suits you.’
‘Dunno,’ the woman answered. ‘You’ve skimped on the violets.’
‘Think so? I can make you some more, now I got me an assistant. Penny a violet all right?’ Belle winked at Honor. ‘You finished Miss Adams’s bonnet? The green one. Yes? Good. You can work in the corner by the window – that’s the best light.’ Before Honor could speak, Belle turned back to her customer to discuss violets.
She worked all afternoon on the bonnets, and gradually her hands stopped shaking. After a while she even wondered if she had imagined the man. Perhaps the heat and light and her own recent trauma had made her turn a dog or a raccoon into a man. She decided then to say nothing to Belle.
The shop had a steady stream of customers; all of them gazed on Honor as a curiosity worth commenting on, though they directed their questions to Belle rather than her. ‘What you got a Quaker in the window for, Belle?’ they asked. ‘Where’s she from? Where’s she going? Why’s she here?’ Belle answered over and over again. By the end of the day every woman in Wellington must know that Honor was from England and on her way to Faithwell, but had stopped with Belle and was helping her out with sewing for a few days. She even made Honor into a feature of the shop. ‘She’s got a fine hand – better than mine, even. You order a bonnet today and I’ll get her to sew it for you. Last you a lifetime, her stitching’s that strong, or till you’re sick of it and want a new one. Then you’ll regret buyin’ one o’ Honor Bright’s bonnets – it just won’t fall apart and give you the excuse for a new one.’
Later, when the light was fading, Belle closed shop for the day and took Honor on a walk around Wellington. Little more than a cluster of shops and houses around a crossroads, its few streets were wide and laid out in a grid oriented north and south, east and west. Main Street had been widened so that there was a rectangular Public Square with a town hall, a church, a hotel and shops – one of them Belle’s – arranged around it. Shops in the surrounding streets included several general stores, as well as a cobbler, a tailor, a blacksmith, a cabinet maker, a brick yard and a carriage maker. Most were two storeys high and made of wood, with awnings and large windows displaying goods. A school had been built, and a train depot was almost finished for the railroad due to begin running to Wellington later in the summer. ‘This town’s gonna explode when that train comes through,’ Belle declared. ‘Good for business. Good for hats.’
As they strolled, Honor had the familiar uneasy feeling she had experienced when passing through American towns on her way to Ohio: that they had been built quickly, and could be destroyed just as quickly, by a fire or the extreme American weather she had heard about, hurricanes and tornadoes and blizzards. The storefronts might be relatively new but they had already been ravaged by sun and snow. The road was both dry and wet, dusty and muddy.
Wherever they went, the road and the planks laid above the mud were spattered with gobs of spit. Honor and Grace had been astonished when they reached New York at how often American men spat, walking around with a bulge of tobacco in their cheeks and letting fly both outside and in. Equally astonishing was that no one else seemed to notice or mind.
Belle nodded at everyone they passed, and stopped to speak a few words to some of the women. Most were wearing everyday bonnets, but a few wore hats that Honor recognised as Belle’s, with their peculiar combinations of trimmings. Belle confirmed this. ‘Some of them make their own bonnets, but all the hats are mine. You’ll see more of ’em Sundays, for church. They wouldn’t dare wear a hat from one of them Oberlin milliners – they know I’d never do business with ’em afterwards. Nothin’ wrong with Oberlin, but you
