One Snowy Night

by Rita Bradshaw

  His voice a whisper, Walt said, ‘You in much pain?’

  He wouldn’t have believed the human heart could suffer pain like this and not give up. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Aw, man. Hold on and once they get through they’ll give you something.’

  Walt was saying the right thing but his brother knew as well as he did that he was too smashed up to survive this, and would he want to? He’d seen other miners, one or two young men like him, who’d been involved in accidents and been left in a hell of a state, good for neither man nor beast and a burden on their loved ones. He wouldn’t want that for Olive, or for his bairn to see her da as a thing to pity.

  Olive . . . His head was getting increasingly muzzy – it was the lack of air. If death came like that he’d welcome it as a release from this pain because he didn’t think he could stand it much longer. But Olive, Olive would miss him. Somewhere in the depth of him he felt a deep sense of regret that he had never told Olive he loved her. It wouldn’t have been true, but did that matter? He liked her, cared about her after all, and she loved him with a passion that had surprised him more and more over the last months and had invoked in him a secret feeling of gratefulness because it acted like a soothing balm on the part of him that was still raw at Ruby’s rejection. Olive made him feel like a king in their little house and he’d found himself actually looking forward to getting home after a shift. He’d been saving his beer and baccy money since the beginning of the year and unbeknown to her he’d bought her a ring he’d seen in the pawnshop. It had been cheap – with money so tight it had to be – but the bloke in the shop had assured him it was gold even if the three stones were blue glass rather than the real thing. But it was pretty and he knew Olive would like it. It was nothing like the small cluster of diamonds and garnets he’d given Ruby when they’d got engaged, but at least it wouldn’t make Olive’s finger green. He’d been planning to give it to her on Christmas morning once Alice had unwrapped the doll they’d bought her. Olive had been knitting clothes for it for weeks with any scraps of wool she could find; he’d made her laugh when he’d remarked that the doll would be a darn sight better dressed than the rest of them. He liked to make her laugh . . .

  ‘Walt.’

  ‘Aye, man?’

  ‘I – I’ve got a ring for Olive. She never had one apart from the wedding ring with how things were back then, but – it’s for Christmas.’

  ‘That’s grand.’

  ‘It’s hidden behind the wardrobe in our bedroom. Make sure she gets it and – and tell her I love her.’

  ‘Aw, man, what are you on about? You’ll tell her yourself and give her the ring an’ all. Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Promise me, Walt.’

  Walter adjusted his position slightly so he could look down into his brother’s face. He’d always regretted the stupid prank they’d played on Adam, which had had such disastrous consequences for so many people, but never so much as now. His voice choked, he whispered, ‘Oh, lad, lad. I’d give me right arm to go back in time.’

  They both knew to what he was referring. Adam wondered how something that had mattered so much was completely unimportant. He had never been able to bring himself to forgive his brothers but now, his lips hardly moving, he murmured, ‘Don’t take on, Walt. Olive’s a good woman and the bairn’s a joy, and you didn’t know how it was going to pan out. Forget it. I have. Water under the bridge. But promise me you’ll tell her. Promise.’

  ‘Aye, aye, lad. Course I promise. Lie quiet now. Hear that tapping? I wasn’t sure a minute ago but there it is again. They’re coming. It won’t be long now.’

  The pain had gone and in its place was a sense of peace Adam could only wonder at. He was more tired than he had ever been in his life and a buzzing in his ears was making it difficult to think, but if this was the way God was going to take him he was thankful for it. He roused himself enough to say, ‘Walt, I want to pray but I forget the words.’

  ‘Pray? Well, aye. There’s worse things we can do while we wait, eh, lad?’ Walter’s voice was over-hearty. ‘Remember when we were bairns how Mam made us kneel every night by our beds, bless her, and say the Lord’s Prayer afore she’d let us up off our knees? Didn’t matter how cold we were, we still had to say it and slow, mind. No gabbling. Here goes then. “Our Father, which art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . .”’

  When Walter came to the end of the prayer he became aware that the tapping he had thought he’d heard for a while was louder, and now he could definitely hear voices too. Softly, he said, ‘Adam, lad, listen. I told you, didn’t I? We’ll be out soon. Adam?’ He looked down into his brother’s face in the dim light. There was a smile about Adam’s lips and his eyes were closed. For a moment Walter breathed a sigh of relief. He was sleeping. Just sleeping.

  One of the other two men left alive crawled across to them and then brought his ear close to Adam’s chest. He remained still for a while before raising his head and then shaking it slowly. ‘I’m sorry, Walt.’

  Walter stared at him and then gathered Adam’s limp body fiercely against his chest with a sound an animal might make. The tears raining down his face and making white rivulets in the grime, he began to shout. He cursed the mine and the unbearable suffering it inflicted on those who robbed it. He cursed the owners who carelessly sacrificed men and boys to die in agony in filthy holes under the ground because they thought them worth less than the cattle in the fields of their country estates. He cursed the government and the whole of the middle and upper classes who sat before their roaring fires in their fine houses and toasted themselves on their victory at putting the miners back under their heels where such ‘creatures’ belonged. He cursed the lot of them to hell and back. And all the time, as he cried out, he held Adam against his heart as though its beat could somehow bring his brother back to life.

  George Morgan lived for another hour or so after Ruby arrived home, and the doctor himself said it was only the patient’s desire to see his younger daughter before he went that had kept him alive for the last twenty-four hours. Ruby and Cissy sat either side of his bed in the front room holding his hands as he slipped away, and after they had cried together, Ruby made her mother go upstairs and lie down, fearing she’d collapse.

  Once Cissy was settled in bed with a stone hot-water bottle at her feet and the curtains drawn, Ruby waited until she was sure her mother was asleep before going downstairs to the kitchen. She felt odd, she admitted to herself as she brewed a pot of tea, and so full of a mixture of emotions that she couldn’t have said even to herself which was foremost. Grief for her da, worry for her mother, overwhelming fear for Adam, concern for Olive. The list was endless but she had to keep calm and be strong for everyone; her mother and sister needed her to do that. But Adam would be all right, she told herself in the next breath. He had to be all right. He and Olive were happy at last and they had Alice. They belonged together, she could see that now. It hurt a little, but more because no one belonged to her than anything else. If she’d had Edward . . .

  Her mam slept for a couple of hours and once Cissy had come downstairs, Ruby asked the next-door neighbour, who was a great friend of her mother, to sit with her while she herself went back to the pit to be with Olive. She arrived just as word spread through the crowd outside the gate that the rescuers were about to break through to the men on the far side of the fall. She slipped her arm through Olive’s and whispered about their da after Olive asked how he was, but she could see Olive’s whole being was concentrated on Adam.

  It was another hour before the survivors were brought up.

  For ever and a day Ruby would remember the moment when Walter walked out of the pit gates flanked by the other two men who had been rescued alive. The sound of the gates clanking open, the falling snow, the silently waiting crowd and the hope on people’s faces as they rose on tiptoe and craned their necks to look for their loved ones, and then the low moans and cries as a deputy began to make the announcement that was the
worst possible news for so many.

  Walter’s wife had pushed through to meet him and was clinging to him as though she would never let him go as he reached his mother. He didn’t have to say anything – his face spoke for itself – and as she all but fainted Olive, along with Fred and Peter’s wives, helped hold her up, united in their grief and loss.

  Ruby had stepped back a pace from the family group. She felt she was on the outside looking in, part of them but not part of them. She had no right to mourn as they were doing, but in this moment the loss of the Adam she had loved – the childhood friend she’d grown up with and the sweetheart he’d become – was nigh on unbearable. It was Adam’s father, who when she and Adam had been together had treated her as one of his own, who put his arm round her and held her tight, the tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks. And only then could she let her own flow.

  George Morgan was buried six days later and the day after that was the service for Adam and the other miners. The morning dawned bright and cold, a white winter sun turning the fresh fall of snow during the night into a beautiful glittering winter wonderland. It was cruel that it was such a lovely day, Ruby thought, as she and Cissy made their way to Olive’s house. The day before had been almost a blizzard when they had buried her father but that had seemed more fitting somehow. Today, the sunshine and the mother-of-pearl sky seemed a mockery in the circumstances.

  It had been decided that Cissy would stay with her granddaughter, and Ruby would represent Adam’s in-laws with Olive. The last few days had taken their toll on Cissy, and both Ruby and Olive were worried that the length of the mass funeral, coming so quickly on the heels of George’s the day before, would be too much for their mother to cope with.

  It seemed as though every house in every street of the town had their curtains closed as a mark of respect as the two women walked on, and when they reached Olive’s back lane no bairns were playing out as would have been expected. In fact, everywhere was still and quiet with no sign of activity in the backyards and no washing hanging out even though it was a Monday. Ruby had never known anything like it and it felt eerie.

  When Ruby looked back on that day in years to come, she could only picture it as a series of images in stark monochrome. The dark clothes of the townsfolk lining the funeral route under the white winter sky; the grim procession of black plumed horses pulling the hearses; the blindingly spotless snow coating the cemetery; the dark wood of endless coffins with their wreaths of white flowers, and overall the bleached pinched faces of the mourners standing like a flock of desolate crows round the graves. Black and white. All colour sucked out of the world by the scale of the tragedy that had unfolded.

  When Adam’s coffin was lowered into the ground side by side with Fred and Peter’s, Ruby found herself holding her sister up as Olive’s knees gave way. Up to this moment Olive had been quietly stoical but now she was unable to control her sobs, the sound being torn out of her like a wounded animal in a trap. All Ruby could do was to hold Olive tight, their tears mingling as their faces pressed together. And still more names were called and more coffins lowered and more wives and mothers sobbed and grieved and more fathers and sons cursed the pit.

  And then, at last, it was over.

  ‘But – but you don’t have to do this. I mean – why would you? I can’t let you . . .’ Olive’s voice trailed helplessly away.

  It was the morning after the funeral and Olive, Ruby and Cissy were sitting at Cissy’s kitchen table having a cup of tea while Alice looked at a picture book on the clippy mat in front of the range. There had been no semblance of colour in Olive’s face when she had walked into the house that morning, nor any life in her voice when she had said that yes, she was all right, thank you, and yes, she would have a cup of tea, but over the last few moments her countenance had changed. Cissy, too, was staring at her younger daughter in sheer amazement.

  Ruby smiled at them both. She had been awake most of the night making plans and formulating the ideas that had been at the back of her mind since Adam’s death. Over the last few days her mother had suddenly become an old woman; it was as though with her husband’s death the main spring that had kept her going through all the ups and downs of the last years had snapped. And Olive was like a lost soul. Most of the time she sat quietly turning the little ring that Adam had apparently bought her for Christmas round and round on her finger, her face ashen and her eyes pools of pain. Ruby didn’t know if it had made her sister feel worse or better when Walter had relayed Adam’s last message to her. At the time she had broken down completely and she hadn’t spoken of it since.

  Now Ruby said briskly, ‘The way I see it, this would be good for all of us. I need someone to manage the new shop and the couple of staff I’ll employ, and the flat above the premises would mean that you, Mam, could take care of Alice while Olive’s working. The flat, of course, would be rent free as part of Olive’s salary and you could bring anything you like from here, both of you, to furnish it as you please.’

  Olive stared at her sister. She hadn’t really slept since Adam had gone; partly because of her grief but also because she had been racking her brains as to how she and Alice would survive. It had been clear that either her mother would move in with her or she and Alice with her mam because two lots of rent was impossible, but even then anything she might earn – supposing she could actually find work of some kind – wouldn’t cover the rent along with food and other bills. A hundred scenarios had been played out in her head every night, and in the depths of the dark hours the spectre of the workhouse had loomed closer and closer. Even if Ruby took their mother to live with her, how would she and Alice manage? She couldn’t survive on charity from her sister, she wouldn’t, whether or not Ruby could afford it for a time. It would be too humiliating. But now Ruby had presented a proposition that changed everything. She would have a job, one that would provide a roof over their heads and a secure home for Alice at a time when the slump was getting worse and worse and unemployment was increasing with terrifying rapidity. There had always been a chasm between rich and poor, but now gaps were opening up between those who had work and those who did not.

  Getting up from the table, she walked round it and took a chair next to Ruby, reaching for her sister’s hands. ‘Thank you, lass,’ she whispered, the tears running down her face and dripping off her long chin. ‘You didn’t have to do this, I know that.’

  ‘Olive, we’re family,’ said Ruby softly.

  Cissy, too, was weeping, and part of her emotion was a deep thankfulness that her two girls were – as she put it to herself – kind again, the old northern term for reconciliation, because didn’t Ruby doing this prove that? The new priest who had taken the place of Father McHaffie after he had succumbed to a bout of influenza two years ago was a great one for saying all things work together for good, and he was right. Father Kane also preached a lot from the New Testament about love and it was generally agreed within the congregation that Father McHaffie must be turning in his grave.

  ‘So.’ Ruby glanced at her mother. ‘That’s agreed then? Once the alterations are done and the flat’s ready after the New Year we’ll hire a vehicle and get you moved in. It’ll take a while to stock the shop and get everything in order but that’s all to the good. I can be showing you the ropes, Olive, and explaining what’s involved.’

  ‘Do you think I can do it?’

  ‘With one hand tied behind your back,’ Ruby grinned. ‘You’re a very capable lady and you can be quite scary – perfect management material.’

  For the first time since Adam’s death, Olive smiled. ‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.’

  ‘The former. Definitely the former.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’

  ‘And over the next little while you and Mam can decide between you what you want to bring, bearing in mind you’re going to have to fit two households into one.’

  ‘I’m not leaving my three-piece suite,’ said Cissy immediately.

 
Ruby and Olive exchanged a glance. Ruby had the feeling that her sister would need to bite her tongue quite often in the coming days.

  Ruby left for Newcastle the following day. Once back, she immediately visited the new premises where her builder was hard at work. Now that the attic room had been cleared of its contents, she could see the idea she’d had regarding it would work. She told the builder she wanted the space divided into one small room and a larger one, with a narrow landing outside so each room had its own door. It would be perfect for Alice and Olive, whilst her mother could occupy the bedroom on the floor below. With her sister and niece’s comfort in mind, she told the builder she wanted the roof better insulated against the harsh northern winters and for his carpenter to build in wardrobes and a dressing table to make the most of the limited space under the sloping roof.

  Ernest McArthur listened to ‘the bit lass with ideas above her station’, as he had previously described Ruby to his wife. He knew why she had spent the last week in Sunderland, and he had offered his condolences on her return, but now, as she explained the reason for the extra work she wanted doing, he found himself re-evaluating his opinion of her. He didn’t hold with all this new thinking about women being able to stand for Parliament and equal rights and the rest of it – a woman’s place was in the home and that was that, and a young lass like this one setting up a business on her own with no man to keep her in check wasn’t right in his opinion – but, that said, it seemed the lass’s heart was in the right place. And to be fair, she’d paid him promptly for the work he’d carried out on her first property, which was more than most of the blokes he dealt with did.

  Mentally knocking a few pounds off the amount he had intended to ask when she had first mentioned the conversion of the attic room, he offered a few practical suggestions of his own before they agreed a price and Ruby disappeared.