Once in the kitchen, the only warm room in the house, she stoked up the fire in the range, which she’d left banked up with slack and damp tea leaves the night before, and went out into the small yard, which she tried to keep clear of snow. There had been a light fall during the night and the tap in the yard had frozen again in the sub-zero temperatures that had persisted for weeks, but she had been expecting this and had brought a small roll of burning paper to push up the spout. It took a couple of trips back indoors and more burning paper before she was rewarded by a trickle, but once the water was flowing she filled up the big iron kettle and set it on the hob in the kitchen. She normally left the kettle full before she went to bed but Adam had decided to sluice his upper body and wash his hair before they had gone to his mother’s the previous night. She hadn’t refilled it before they’d left and it had been after two in the morning when they’d got home.
Fifteen minutes later when Adam came downstairs she had a pot of tea on the table and within moments set his bowl of steaming porridge in front of him. He sat down and began eating as she poured him a cup of tea before seeing to his bait, which was four thick slices of bread and jam and a bottle of cold tea. Once she’d packed it into his knapsack and he’d finished the porridge, he reached for his jacket and cap, thrust his feet into the big steel-capped boots by the back door and left the house with the knapsack over one arm. Not a word had passed between them, but once the back door had closed behind him Olive let out a long deep breath, consciously relaxing tense muscles, and plumped down on a kitchen chair.
After a few moments of staring into space she glanced round her. The kitchen was as clean as a new pin and the blackleaded range was shining, the coal in the open fireplace glowing a deep red and this, combined with the flickering light from the oil lamp in the middle of the table which she had lit first thing, lent a cosy comfort to the surroundings. For the hundredth time since she had married Adam, she told herself she could be happy if only things were different between them. She didn’t mind that they had to watch every penny and rob Peter to pay Paul every week, or that life was a daily struggle to make ends meet; wasn’t it the same for everyone? Adam was earning less than when they’d first wed and working longer hours for it, and everyone knew that when the government stopped paying the coal owners the subsidy at the end of April, the unions and the coal owners would go head to head. Life was uncertain now but it would get ten times worse then. The owners and the Tories were determined to have a contest of strength with the miners and destroy the unions once and for all; the men had talked of nothing else at the get-together last night, and Adam’s mam and his brothers’ wives had confessed they were worried about what the year would bring.
Olive rose to her feet and made another pot of tea, and once it was mashed she poured herself a cup. She and Adam drank it black now; his wage didn’t run to them having milk and sugar although she made sure Alice had her milk each day.
The sky was lightening outside the window but it was low and heavy, threatening more snow. For once, Olive let her mind wander, probably because she was tired after the late night and not least bruised and sore after Adam’s rough handling of her.
It was nearly four years since she had last seen Ruby. There had been times, in the dead of night when the rest of the world was asleep, when she had imagined herself going to Newcastle and searching and searching until she found her sister. After begging Ruby to forgive her a reconciliation would follow, and then Ruby would accompany her home to see their parents. Their mam and da missed her, and since their da had become bedridden twelve months ago she knew he brooded more about things. But then, in the cold light of day, she accepted it was an impossible undertaking. Ruby wrote to their mam every two or three months to say she was well and doing all right but never gave any hint of where she was living or working; it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And how would Adam react if he saw Ruby again? Things were bad enough as it was.
She heard the patter of little feet on the wooden stairs and the next moment Alice came bounding into the kitchen clutching her teddy bear. The bear was threadbare and patched and missing an eye; it had once been hers, and probably because of that it was the child’s favourite toy and she wouldn’t settle down for sleep without him.
Olive held out her arms and Alice threw herself into them, snuggling into her mother’s chest before she drew away and said, ‘Milk, please, Mam.’
Olive hugged her daughter tight and then lifted her into her highchair. The day was beginning and she had no more time for introspection, which was a good thing. Alice slept well but when she was awake she was on the go a hundred per cent. ‘A live wire,’ her da called his granddaughter, and Olive could remember that Ruby had been the same. In fact, there was a great deal about her daughter that reminded her of Ruby.
Shutting the door on that particular avenue of thought Olive busied herself with Alice’s beaker of warm milk, and as she fell into the routine of the morning, listening to the child’s chatter and watching her sunny little face, she counted her blessings.
As long as she had Alice nothing else mattered.
Olive would have been amazed to know that Adam was thinking about Alice too as he stepped into the cage that would take him and the rest of the fore shift into the bowels of the earth. Neither the gate slamming shut nor the cage taking off with a clash impinged on his thoughts; this had been his daily experience for years and the speed and seeming lack of control with which they descended was second nature to him.
Unbeknown to Olive, he had looked in on Alice before he had gone downstairs to the kitchen. He often did this when he could be sure Olive was occupied downstairs, because he would rather have been hanged, drawn and quartered than admit to his growing affection for his daughter. He hadn’t wanted to become fond of the child and he had fought the emotion since the day she was born. It had been easier when she was a baby. He had been able to say to himself that the infant was merely a biological product of an act of lust on his part and cunning manipulation on Olive’s, and that, along with her mother, she repulsed him. Through her conception he had lost the woman he loved and become trapped in a living nightmare – why wouldn’t he hate and resent her? He wanted to hate and resent her. And then one day just over twelve months ago Alice had been toddling about in the backyard when he’d come home from his shift and had fallen over in front of him, grazing her knees. And it was what the child had done next that had got to him. Through her tears she had lifted her arms to be picked up and said, ‘Dada.’
The word had cut through all his carefully built defences like a knife through butter. He had stood there like a moron staring down at her, and but for Olive rushing out into the yard and whisking Alice up into her arms he would have betrayed himself then and there by picking her up and comforting her. Olive had glared at him and even accused him of pushing the child if he remembered correctly, and in the row that had followed the moment of weakness had passed. But it was from then that something had changed, as much with Alice as himself. He had still maintained the stiff, unapproachable facade and it fooled everyone but the child herself. It was as though his daughter had seen what he’d felt – that was the only way he could describe her sudden lack of fear regarding him – and it had melted his heart. He hadn’t wanted it to happen but now it had he was powerless before the emotions it invoked. She was his daughter. This perfect little creature with her huge eyes and sweet nature was part of him, and although the new awareness was hard because it constantly tore him apart inside when he told himself Ruby should have been her mother, he couldn’t fight the love. He had imagined the drink would help and when he got legless it did put a balm on the rawness for a few brief hours, but once he was sober again the knowledge of what a hell of a mess he’d made of his life would grip him even more strongly.
The cage clanged to a stop and he let the other miners go first, several of whom – including his brothers – looked as hungover as he felt. His father was the last one to leave in front of h
im and as they walked into the main road, which was well lit, unlike where they’d be working, his father turned and said, ‘All right, lad?’
He nodded. He knew his mam and da worried about him but he didn’t want their concern or their pity; he just wanted to be left alone.
‘Your mam was wondering if you and Olive and the bairn’d be round on Sunday?’
He shook his head. ‘Things to do,’ he said briefly. He knew if he went it would turn into another drinking session with his father and brothers once Sunday tea was over and the women and bairns took over the front room while the menfolk stayed in the kitchen, and he wanted neither the drink nor the conversation which would centre exclusively on the coal owners and what the unions should do. He had to get a handle on the drink, he knew that; he couldn’t carry on as he was.
His father shrugged. ‘Please yourself,’ he said as he turned and walked on ahead. ‘But you know you’re always welcome, and your mam likes to see Olive and the bairn.’
Adam gritted his teeth but didn’t reply. He had no real beef with his parents except that they seemed determined to forget how Olive had tricked him into getting wed and to act as though their marriage was a normal one. They’d even grown to like Olive; his mam in particular showed her approval in a hundred little ways that grated on him every time they were round there. ‘No one makes a fruit cake like Olive.’ ‘There’s not a bairn as well turned out as our little Alice.’ ‘Never seen a speck of dirt in your kitchen, lass.’ Oh, aye, he’d heard it all.
He walked behind his da and the others as the road got narrower and the roof got lower until they were all doubled up and only the light from their lamps pierced the darkness. No one hung about. They only got paid from the time they reached the place where they would begin work and that could take half an hour or more. It was now pitch black, blacker than the darkest night. When he was a little lad he had shut his eyes in bed sometimes and imagined that was how it was down the pit, but on his first day down he’d realized that the pit’s blackness was something beyond that. It was the kind of primeval malignant darkness where you can see nothing at all no matter how long your eyes take to get used to it, something that could turn you into a gibbering idiot if you let it. That blackness could accomplish what the mice and rats and blacklocks – huge, ugly, shiny black-backed beetles with feelers as long as bootlaces and a nasty habit of dropping down your neck – couldn’t do, and that was why he and the other miners took care of their lamps as though they were made of solid gold.
Once he reached the face where he was working, Adam brought his mind to bear on the job in hand and put all thoughts of his tortured private life out of his head. It was a relief to think of nothing. In fact, he often told himself his hours down the pit each day had kept him sane the last few years, and he dare bet there wasn’t another miner in the county of Durham who would know what he meant if he was foolish enough to voice such a sentiment out loud.
Chapter Thirteen
It was the middle of March and for the first time in weeks the pavements were free of ice and snow due to a sudden thaw. Although still cold, the day had been bright and sunny with a clear blue sky and a smell in the air that heralded spring was definitely around the corner. A thick twilight had fallen by the time Ruby and Bridget left the workhouse, but nevertheless it felt good not to be walking along Bath Lane Terrace in complete darkness when they got off the tram. The winter had been long and hard, unemployment was rising slowly and insidiously, and several choking pea-souper smogs which had blanketed the skies over Newcastle for days on end had affected the very young and very old adversely, increasing the intake into the workhouse for the latter when illness had proved the last straw to staying in their homes. Ruby had seen first-hand that the fine line between merely being poor, and living in a poverty that became unsustainable, could be as simple as the loss of a couple of wage packets.
Bridget was in the middle of telling her about a family that had been admitted to the workhouse the day before who had been riddled with nits, lice, ringworm, impetigo and fleas, the father crippled with arthritis and the five children bow-legged with rickets and barely able to walk, when she stopped abruptly, peering through the gathering gloom. ‘Is that Daisy?’ she said, as a figure stepped out of the shadows and came hurrying towards them.
Ruby’s stomach turned over and her heart began to race. It had been over eighteen months since the traumatic visit to the house near the docks, and in that time she had heard nothing from Ellie. Flo had told Bridget that she’d seen Ellie in the company of Daniel a couple of times and that she’d seemed all right, but aside from that, nothing. She had written several letters to Ellie, begging her to keep in touch, but after the fifth note had been ignored like the ones before it Ruby had conceded defeat. Ellie knew where she was. Hopefully, if things became too unbearable with Daniel, Ellie would seek refuge with her.
Ellie had to come to the point herself where she felt staying with Daniel Bell was worse than the possible repercussions if she left him. It had been Edward who had said that, and Ruby could see it made sense. It said a lot for both Clarissa and Edward’s persistence that Ruby now counted them as friends, but Clarissa had been determined from day one not to let the social gulf that Ruby pointed out time and time again come between them. Edward had followed his sister’s lead in using a steady drip-drip approach to overcome Ruby’s misgivings about their acquaintance, and had put himself forward in the guise of simply a friend. As such, Ruby accepted his presence in her life. And when his frustration at the role he was playing became too much, he would tell himself that Rome wasn’t built in a day.
‘Daisy?’ As the other girl reached them, Ruby stared at her. The girl she remembered seeing on Daniel’s landing that day had been young and, if not exactly pretty, had had a certain attractive pertness to her. Now Daisy looked scared to death and the air of jauntiness was gone. ‘What is it? Is Ellie all right?’
‘No. It’s about her I’ve come. I can’t be long. Dan’d kill me if he knew I was here and I’ve got to be there when he gets back to the house, but Howard an’ me are worried she’ll—’ She broke off, and with a little sob, said, ‘She’s bad, real bad.’
‘Bad?’ said Ruby and Bridget in unison.
‘Daniel took her to old Aggie’s last night. She didn’t want to but he made her. An’ she was awful when she come back, I could hear her moaning and crying all night, but he don’t care.’ Daisy’s voice was bitter. ‘Went off this afternoon as happy as you like to see to some business down at the docks, an’ Ellie not knowing what to do with herself. When Howard said about gettin’ someone, Dan went for him, but the bleeding won’t stop.’
‘Daisy, who’s old Aggie?’
‘One of the backstreet midwives who’ll fix you up if you pay for it, but they use dirty crochet hooks an’ all sorts. Ellie was terrified he’d make her see one of ’em when the castor oil and hot baths didn’t do it – scalded herself, she did, she had the water so hot, but nothing worked.’
Ruby’s blood had run cold.
‘He’s a maniac, that Daniel,’ Daisy went on. ‘Howard’s had enough of him and this is the final straw. We’re gonna clear off down south on the quiet, but don’t tell him that,’ she added, looking suddenly terrified.
‘I’ve got to go to her.’ Ruby looked at Bridget. ‘Make some excuse to Mrs Duffy about where I am, say there was an emergency at the workhouse and I’ve agreed to stand in for someone, something like that.’
‘You can’t, lass. What if he comes back and finds you there?’ Bridget was literally wringing her hands in distress.
‘I don’t care. She needs a doctor.’ They’d had a young girl left at the workhouse doors just the other day who’d had a botched abortion. Terrified at the shame of unmarried motherhood, the fifteen-year-old had attempted to terminate her pregnancy with the help of her mother using a home-made purgative containing soap and aloes and liquid paraffin, and when that hadn’t worked, her mother’s knitting needle. She wouldn’t give her
name or say where she lived and had died in agony of an incomplete abortion that had also punctured her bowels, and had been buried in a pauper’s grave without even her name to mark the place. Ruby had spoken with Clarissa about it and her friend had said it was one of the things Lady Russell was campaigning about; up and down the country the gynaecological wards in hospitals were full of women suffering terribly for the same reason and many died, most of them from the working class.
‘Widespread ignorance about sexual matters is a huge national hazard,’ Clarissa had stated without a trace of embarrassment, ‘and some married women don’t know how a baby is born even when well into their first pregnancy. It’s a disgrace. Most women have no idea they can take measures to prevent conception, and many men can’t be shaken from the belief that any form of contraception leads to sterility. I mean, French letters were distributed to soldiers in the war to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases – what’s wrong with using them in peace time? Of course, the fact that a packet of ten costs ten shillings could have something to do with it for the poor. Lady Russell believes they should be free if necessary. How else are we going to stop unwanted pregnancies or tragedies like the poor girl you mentioned?’
When Ruby had confessed that she had no idea what French letters were or what was involved in the birth of a baby, it had led to a frank and revealing conversation that had opened her eyes good and proper about many things she’d hitherto only had a vague idea about.
Now, armed with that knowledge and the realization that Daniel clearly hadn’t seen fit to protect Ellie in any way from getting pregnant by one of her customers, either with one of the Dutch caps that Clarissa had told her about or by providing French letters for the men to use, Ruby was angrier than she had ever been.
One Snowy Night Page 17