Black Sheep

by Susan Hill

  ‘Rose!’ But as Ted had come in from school, Rose had slipped out of the door and vanished like a soap bubble when it touched the door frame. So Ted would come with her, pushing the old pram by holding one side of the handle while Evie held the other. ‘You’re as good as that lump of a sister any day,’ Evie said, though in truth it was harder on her to have just him lending his weight, because there was so little of it. Ted was thin enough to go through a crack in the door, and pale-skinned, fair-haired, like a wraith. But he pushed without complaint or suggesting a pause and together they manoeuvred the pram full of clean washing up the steep path to number 8 Paradise.

  Rose had weighed it up and decided the risk was worthwhile. She resented being the only girl and so the only skivvy, with her mother, to five males, while knowing perfectly well that it was usual.

  Mary Roberts was on the corner of Middle, near the last house before the track that led to the school. They sneaked through the side gate of the chapel and came out in the stretch of open grass where the youngest kids had playtime in fine weather. Nobody else was about.

  ‘I got one,’ Mary said, grinning to show her black front tooth, and dived into her pocket for the cigarette, which was slightly flattened and ragged where tobacco was pulling out of the end. The matches were hidden in the bole of the single tree that stood beside the gate.

  It was Mary who had started it, bringing a cigarette from her father’s pocket one day the previous summer. It had taken Rose a long time to get used to the taste and the smell, and even now, she felt sick for the first few puffs, though she would never have admitted it. None of the men in her own house smoked, apart from her father, who had a single pipe every Saturday night. Mary’s mother and elder sister smoked, it was easy to get hold of them furtively.

  They leaned against the tree, taking turns at the cigarette, holding it out on an extended arm between first fingers, or cupped backwards in their palms, getting the feel.

  They said nothing. No one was about. The Monday suds had dissolved away now. The pit smoke clouded the air and the smoke from their cigarette, wispy and pale, couldn’t hold out against it.

  ‘I saw Harry,’ Rose said, looking right away from Mary. ‘He was with Roy.’

  Mary said nothing. It was her turn for the cigarette.

  ‘They’ll be there together then. I expect.’

  ‘I expect.’

  Harry Murdon and Roy James, the same age as Arthur, but there the likeness began and ended. Arthur would never have gone to the Institute Saturday night, nor learned how to eye a girl without appearing to, nor had a close friend.

  Rose threw the cigarette down, disliking the strong smell of the butt end on her fingers, and ground it with her heel.

  ‘You’ll be for it,’ Mary said.

  ‘So will you.’

  They burst out laughing.

  2

  ‘THY WORD IS a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.’

  Reuben sat in the corner of the room, the Bible open on his knee. Ted sat on the window ledge, looking down the slopes to the top of the pit winding gear, just visible from here. If he went and stood on the front step of 8 Paradise, he could see it clearly.

  ‘For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his land.’

  His grandfather’s voice rumbled on and the murmurings of his mother and grandmother in the room above formed a lighter descant to it.

  ‘Do you have anything you can say, our Ted?’

  Ted struggled. They had a Bible reading every morning at the start of school, and a Religious Instruction class once a week, but he never remembered much, though he liked the sound of the words, as he liked to hear his grandfather read the Bible aloud, since it was the earliest sound he could remember, and so a familiar comfort to him.

  ‘Before the mountains were settled before the hills was I brought forth,’ Ted said, closing his eyes to help him remember right.

  His grandfather grunted.

  Ted looked at him, then out of the window again.

  ‘You give me chapter and verse, boy, chapter and verse.’

  But Ted could not.

  The voices of the two women went on like a bubbling stream above.

  When he was a baby, in the pram that they had just pushed up the slopes full of clean washing, Ted had been put with his grandfather and left to listen to the words of the Bible, which Reuben read day and night, sometimes in silence, often aloud. The deep voice and the words had been the background to Ted’s waking and sleeping, and as he grew older, to his pottering about the room, in and out of the door, back again, clambering over the steep step. The voice had always been there, like the air and the light.

  ‘I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.’

  He did not know the meaning of the words but they slipped over him, wrapping him in an assurance of safety even when they were in the Old Testament’s most thundering and vengeful strain.

  At eight now, he understood a little more and sometimes longed for a phrase or two of gentleness. He wanted to ask questions too, but knew better, for Reuben would never answer except with another river of words.

  Ted leaned his head against the pane and watched for the file of men to come trailing up the slope at the end of their shift.

  In the bedroom above, Evie sat on the straight-backed chair beside the bed.

  ‘Well, if you won’t show me at least describe to me what it’s like.’

  Alice’s back was turned away from her. She fidgeted constantly with the button on her blouse.

  ‘Don’t tell him,’ she said for the hundredth time. ‘Don’t say a word.’

  ‘I’ve promised, haven’t I? Am I a liar?’

  Silence.

  ‘He knows there’s something wrong, Alice.’

  ‘What has he said?’

  Evie hesitated, then repeated the one thing. ‘That you’re not very swift about the place. Which is plain for all to see.’

  ‘I seem to have no stuffing left in me.’

  ‘I can tell.’

  Alice had lost more weight. Not that she had ever been stout. The flesh seemed to have peeled off her bones and the skin hung loose.

  ‘If you’d show me.’

  ‘I’ve shown no one. I get dressed and undressed in the dark.’

  Evie tutted, and then decided. She got up and went to stand in front of the other woman, took Alice’s hands in hers and held them firmly away, then started to undo the buttons of her blouse, from the top. Alice took a breath, then let it go. Let Evie carry on.

  She opened the blouse carefully. Alice sighed.

  The swelling was the size of an apricot, pushing against the skin. Evie pulled her hand away sharply.

  ‘Oh, Alice.’

  Alice’s expression was blank but when Evie looked into her eyes she saw fear there.

  ‘You have to see the doctor. You have to go at once. Go tomorrow.’

  Alice shook her head and started to put her clothing straight again.

  ‘I know what it is, Evie, I know there’s nothing he can do or say. And so do you if you’ll be truthful.’

  Evie did know.

  She put her hand on the other woman’s arm and rested it there, and so they stood, both silent, as if they were staring into the depths of the same river but from opposite banks.

  3

  DURING THE WEEKS going into that winter, Mary took up with Charlie Minns, whose father was one of the pit inspectors and lived in a house set apart from the terraces, and after that, although Rose saw her here and there, things were never the same between them and there were no more sneaked half-hours with giggling and cigarettes. But one afternoon when it was wet and the sky seemed to have been lowered, to hang heavy over the village, Rose was sent to the shop to buy extra flour and there was Mary, in a new skirt and woollen jacket, and with her hair curled up. Rose took a step back as she saw her, uncertain and tongue-tied.

  Mary looked her up and down and shifted her nec
k a little inside the collar of the new jacket. She was buying soap.

  ‘Would you wrap it please?’

  Mrs Leather gave her a hard look, which pleased Rose.

  ‘Your mam never asks. I don’t have wrapping paper to burn.’

  Mary put her hand up and pulled the lapel of the jacket straighter.

  She doesn’t want to be seen carrying soap, Mrs Leather’s look said to Rose.

  ‘Oh, never mind.’ Mary put the money down and took up the soap bar, holding it slightly away from her.

  ‘Hello, Mary,’ Rose said, quite at ease now.

  Mary stopped. ‘Oh, Rose . . . I didn’t catch sight of you there. How are you getting on?’

  ‘Very well, thank you.’

  ‘I’m so busy I don’t have much time to see anyone these days. Why don’t you come to the Institute on Saturday night? We don’t always go there now, me and Charlie, we like to venture a bit further afield, you know how it is, but we’ll go Saturday, show you who’s who. Will you?’

  I know very well who’s who, Rose wanted to say, I went to school with them all, didn’t I? And so did you.

  ‘I must fly, get this bloomin’ soap home before Charlie comes round.’

  ‘Goodbye then.’

  As she was closing the shop door, hand on the latch, Mary said again, ‘You will come, Rose?’

  There was something in her voice.

  ‘I’ll try,’ Rose said and turned to Mrs Leather to ask for the flour.

  She said nothing more, but when she got out of the shop, saw Mary hovering a few yards ahead. She wanted to swish past her, head in the air, but she knew she would never bring off such a gesture, so all she did was walk as if she was not going to stop.

  ‘Wait, Rosie.’

  Rose waited, out of surprise at being called Rosie, the name she had left behind at primary school. But she waited for Mary to do any of the talking.

  ‘Will you come?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’d have a good time. It’s fun. We’d look after you.’

  ‘I don’t need you to look after me.’

  ‘You know what I mean. I’m sorry I haven’t seen you lately.’

  ‘No you’re not. You know where I live, I haven’t moved.’

  They neared the house before either spoke again.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ Mary said then.

  ‘No, you have. A pit inspector’s son is higher up in the world. You have to wear grander clothes.’

  ‘Rosie . . .’

  ‘I’m not Rosie.’

  ‘I thought it might be all right, I thought you were a real friend. Real friends don’t take on just because of who I’m going out with. How can I help what job his dad does?’

  ‘You can’t. But what job does Charlie do? I think he’s training up to be the same, isn’t he? I don’t think he’s in the black hole at the bottom of the pit shaft like ours.’

  Rose felt ashamed of herself for saying it, but now it was said, she did not know how to take it back, though she saw the look on Mary’s face, of hurt and unhappiness.

  ‘Bye then, Mary.’ It was the best she could do. She lifted her hand in a half-wave, as she went in the door. But she didn’t look round.

  The house was thick with the smell of coal dust and the heat of the men’s bodies, the kitchen smaller by half now three of them were back and digging in round the table, with Ted as usual kneeling on the window ledge looking out and Evie banging pans.

  ‘You been milling that flour or what?’

  ‘Sorry. I met Mary and she kept me talking.’

  ‘No one keeps you talking if you don’t want to be kept and don’t waste your breath on those that act high and mighty.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. It’s not her fault what job he does. Why shouldn’t he? Someone’s got to be a pit inspector.’

  ‘I hope your dad didn’t hear that.’

  ‘I heard it.’ John rumbled from the table. But he had his mouth full of meat-and-potato pie and was not really roused.

  Jimmy would go to bed straight after tea. Arthur was on late shift with his father. Evie and Rose cleaned the boots, put out two fresh shirts, made up the bait tins. The door stood open to let in some air. But summer was worst, Rose thought, banging the brush on the step before starting on the next boot, August when the sun might hammer down on Mount of Zeal for two or three weeks at a time and the houses smelled of sweat and breath and feet and smuts, and every door and window from Lower to Paradise stood open day and night.

  ‘I dare say Mary will be wed to him,’ Evie said now, giving her a sharp look. Rose shrugged. ‘And no reason why not. One way of bettering yourself.’

  ‘And leaving your old friends behind.’

  ‘Well, what would you do?’

  ‘I wouldn’t marry Charlie. He squints.’

  ‘Doesn’t make him a bad lad.’

  ‘It makes him ugly.’ Rose set the last boot down on the floor.

  ‘So who are you picking to get out the pillowcases for?’

  Rose was angry, not only for what Evie had said, but for not being able to stop herself flushing up scarlet. She turned away and would have got out of the room, but for Clive sticking his leg in front of her and almost having her on the floor. She heard them all roaring with laughter, saw their faces, mouths open and full of tea and pie, and as well as being red in the face, she was in tears as well, hating to be laughed at.

  Only Ted, still looking out of the window, was apart from the scene.

  ‘Leave the girl,’ John Howker said, scraping his plate, ‘let her alone.’ But he was good-humoured, and never serious about chastising them where Rose was involved. Rose was fair game.

  Husband and wife had precious little time to talk privately. Evie was getting this or that man off to his shift or sorting them out the minute they got back. No one went and came at the same regular time. And so it was not until four days later that she had a chance to talk to him about his mother.

  ‘How do you mean, “it looks bad”?’

  ‘Will you hear? She showed it to me. She has a lump on her – her breast, like a gull’s egg.’

  ‘How did she start up a boil there?’

  ‘Not a boil.’

  ‘Oh, all right then.’ He turned over.

  ‘Your mother has a cancer.’

  ‘Now how do you know that?’

  ‘I saw it, John.’

  He was silent. The whole room was full of the silence and the weight of what she had said lay upon it.

  ‘I don’t know what she’s to do. I’m taking the washing. Rose’ll help me. Reuben’s fit for nothing. She hasn’t told him a word.’

  After a few moments she reached out and touched John’s arm and kept her hand there. She felt him, silent, thinking it over, letting what it meant sink down, and then she felt his body fall heavy into sleep.

  4

  THAT AUTUMN AND early winter Alice Howker lay dying and whenever he did not have to be at school Ted was with her. He fetched anything she might want, which was precious little, and otherwise sat quietly on the floor beside the big bed, or stood at the window looking down over the whole of Mount of Zeal, and lights in the terraces from every house, in Paradise, Middle and Lower. It was dark now when the men came up from the five o’clock. Ted saw lights from the pithead and the file of them trudging away from it and home.

  ‘I shan’t see you into double figures,’ his grandmother said, out of nowhere, one late afternoon. The oil lamp was on, tallow light falling onto her face, finding out the hollows and making the bones gleam under the yellow skin.

  Ted turned from the window. He knew what she meant but could think of nothing to say.

  ‘You’re the best of boys.’ The words were barely carried to him on her thin breath. She was tired from morning to night now, though she barely slept. ‘You know what I’m saying?’

  Ted nodded.

  ‘You’re . . .’ She sighed and closed her eyes. He watched her eyelids flutter occasionally as s
he dozed and her hand twitch as it rested on the sheet. He went back to the window. The pit winding gear showed like gallows against the last red of the sky.

  He heard the back door close, his mother’s voice, his grandfather’s, the two weaving in and out, bass and descant. Footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘I’ll see to Alice.’

  Ted went down.

  Reuben was sitting in his chair by the stove, as usual. He rarely moved from it now.

  ‘I could prod his great idle backside with a pitchfork,’ Evie had said.

  ‘There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright and one that feared God and eschewed evil.’

  Ted listened to the words rolling like thunder round the room. He knew these well though they were not his favourites.

  He said, ‘And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him, in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.’

  Reuben looked up. ‘Go on.’

  Ted shook his head.

  ‘Go on . . .’

  Ted gathered the words together, knitting them up into the verses gradually. Reuben waited, his finger marking the page in the black Bible.

  ‘And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.’

  In the bedroom, Evie was lifting the dressing off the sore on Alice’s breast, which was now like an egg whose shell had broken open. She tried not to turn away from the sight and the smell, knowing how hurtful such a move was, knowing Alice’s eyes never left her face but searched for the smallest clue as to how it looked, how much worse it seemed, what Evie was thinking but would never say.

  When the dressing was done, and the foul one put into a bag to be carried away, and Alice was as comfortable as she would ever be now, against the freshly plumped pillows, Evie took her hand.

  ‘I can’t go on doing this. It isn’t my place, it isn’t my job. I’m not the right person.’