A Daughter's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  She had seen little of Jack in two days because she had been working on the ground floor, where what had been a drawing room opening out into a dining room had now been combined to make a large ward for the more acute patients who needed careful watching. She had given up her day off to help out too, though she agonised over missing a visit to Stand Alone Farm and Jenny. But she had scribbled a postcard to her sister and hoped Peart would read it out. In fact, she had written on it that he should. But would he?

  ‘If you could help me to do the dressings on this floor?’ Nurse Turner said one morning when Nurse Middleham was on her day off. Nurse Middleham insisted on taking all the hours off she was due, saying she needed them if she was to maintain her health and be any good to the patients. Elizabeth had noticed Nurse Turner smiling grimly at that.

  ‘I am expected downstairs,’ Elizabeth said hesitantly. She felt torn. How could she be in both places at once?

  ‘Yes, well, we’ll be quite quick and then you can go, it will be all right.’

  Elizabeth’s heart beat a little faster when they opened the door of what she thought of as Jack’s room. But it didn’t look the same. There were two beds in there and both were occupied by strangers.

  ‘Where’s Captain Benson?’ she asked, her voice sounding odd in her own ears.

  ‘Discharged,’ Nurse Turner replied. ‘Now, we’ll begin with Captain Johnson. He has a shrapnel wound in his back and it’s suppurating …’

  Elizabeth moved forward, took the hydrogen peroxide from the bottom of the trolley and poured some into a kidney dish while Nurse Turner scrubbed up at the washstand in the corner.

  ‘He’s gone home. He didn’t even tell me he was going,’ she whispered.

  ‘Did you say something, Nurse?’ queried the officer, lying prone on the bed, his head turned to face her.

  Elizabeth stared at him in utter misery. ‘No, sir,’ she said, then coughed. ‘No, sir,’ she said again, louder.

  ‘Come on then, Nurse, get on with it.’ Nurse Turner was standing by the trolley, her hands held up, pink and glistening from the scrubbing they had received. Elizabeth took a pair of forceps and handed her a clean dressing towel from the trolley on which to dry them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘I DON’T THINK you should be going. If you make yourself ill it will be I who must bear the brunt of it,’ said Mrs Benson. She stared in disapproval across the breakfast table at her son. He was wearing his captain’s uniform, his Sam Browne belt and brass buttons gleaming from the polishing he had given them the day before.

  ‘If I stay loafing about here, Mother, I shall go mad,’ he replied. He got up and walked to the sideboard, a trifle stiffly but he did it without any outward signs of discomfort. He looked well, Olivia Benson had to admit to herself. He looked remarkably like his father when he was the same age. Before he had drunk and gambled himself into an early grave. But still …

  ‘You can get the mine manager to bring the books up here, there’s no need to go down there.’

  ‘No, I want to see for myself what is happening. Morton Main is the only mine left to us, I must see it does well.’

  ‘I need the carriage myself this morning. It’s the Ladies’ Guild morning. We are working for the war effort.’

  ‘Are you, Mother? Well, don’t let it worry you, I can drive the trap myself.’

  His mother compressed her lips into a thin, hard line. ‘Well, if you must, you must. I see nothing I say has any influence on you at all.’ She flounced out of the room and Jack grinned wryly. He had seen her enact the exact same scene so often with his father when he was alive. She was a strong-willed woman; no wonder his father had turned to drink. But if he himself were to stay here, at least for a while, he had to go his own way.

  It wasn’t far to the mining village. Later, when his legs were stronger, he should be able to walk down there, but for now it was enough to be out in the fresh air on his own. He had been dependent on other people for so long. It was a fine winter’s day, the air sharp with frost, the sun coming through the bare branches of the trees to the side of the track. He whistled softly as he went, his thoughts turning to Elizabeth as they always did these days.

  He loved her, he had to admit it to himself. But could she love a man crippled as he was? There was Christmas night, every detail etched on his memory. He had thought she loved him then but had he just caught her when she was vulnerable, seduced her? Her attitude since then, the way she went out of her way to avoid him when he was at the Hall, had given him cause for doubt. He looked down at the highly polished shoes over his false feet. For that’s what they were. False. He was sure they fooled nobody.

  Don’t become maudlin, he told himself. Think of all the poor beggars who haven’t made it back, all the ones with injuries so much worse than his. He lifted his head and began whistling again. The pony pricked up his ears and trotted on and the trap turned into the pit yard at Morton Main and came to a halt outside the offices. The yard was busy with men going to and fro. They all glanced at him in curiosity but then got on with their business. The winding wheel whirred round; loaded tubs were being taken out of the cage. There was the sound of sawing from the carpenter’s shop, a hammering from the blacksmith’s. The manager looked through the window of his office and came hurrying out to greet Jack.

  ‘Captain Benson! I didn’t expect to see you, not for a long while yet,’ he exclaimed. He held out one hand. ‘Can I assist you to a chair in the office?’

  ‘Good morning, Dunne. I can manage.’

  Jack got down from the trap, careful to stand straight, refusing to acknowledge any difficulty though he did pick up his stick from the seat and use it to steady himself.

  ‘Lead the way, Dunne.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Mr Dunne held the door of his office open and Jack negotiated the two steps to it successfully, but he was glad when he could sit down before the desk. So far, so good, he told himself.

  ‘Nice morning, isn’t it?’ he said pleasantly. ‘I’ll have a look at the books, Dunne.’

  ‘Mr Jones inspected them on Friday, sir,’ said Mr Dunne, raising his eyebrows. ‘I’m sure he found nothing wrong.’

  Jones was the mining agent employed by the family when Jack’s father had died. It was Jack’s intention, and he had been thinking about it all weekend, to take over the agent’s job himself. After all, Jones was agent for a number of mines, it wouldn’t affect him much, and Jack reckoned he could do it. He had dreamed of an army career, but that was out of the question now.

  He looked over the books for most of the morning, asking Mr Dunne questions about anything he was unsure of, making notes in the notebook he had brought with him. The hooter sounded at the end of the fore shift and the wheel whirred and the cage ran up and down, clanging open and shut as it disgorged the black-faced miners into the yard. Jack watched with interest. Some of them were mere boys, he realised, some older men, bent and with worn faces that no amount of coal dust could hide.

  There was a knock at the door and the horsekeeper put his head round. ‘Will I feed the pony, sir?’ he asked. He had a nosebag in his hand, obviously expecting an affirmative answer.

  ‘Thank you,’ Jack replied. It was one o’clock before he closed his notebook and sat back in his chair. ‘I’d better go back to lunch,’ he remarked to the manager who was still sitting on the other side of the desk, working on papers, or at least ruffling them and putting ticks and crosses on them at intervals for all the world like a schoolmaster. Obviously he did not intend to leave the office while Jack was there.

  ‘Will you be returning today, sir?’

  He smiled. ‘Not today, I think. But I’ll be back soon.’ He glanced at the telephone. Dunne would be ringing the agent as soon as the trap left the yard, he thought. In fact, he would bet on it. Well, let him. Jack himself would be calling too.

  Just then the telephone rang. He waited as the manager picked up the receiver and suddenly the hooter sounded again, short, broken bla
sts, the signal that something was wrong in the pit. Dunne was on his feet, still talking. ‘Right, I’ll alert the Ambulance room,’ he said. ‘Just the one, did you say? Right.’

  He put down the telephone and looked across at Jack. ‘Sorry, I have to go. Accident. One of the putters trapped between tubs.’ He wasted no more time talking. Jack followed him out into the yard where there was a sudden flurry of activity around the shaft. Jack waited. This side of mining he had never seen. He wondered if the man was badly hurt. But when the cage reached the bank after what seemed an age, he realised with a sick feeling inside his stomach that it was a boy, not a man, lying so still on the stretcher they brought out. He watched in horror as the stretcher was carried to the Ambulance room. The boy was wearing nothing but his helmet and boots and a pair of short blue cotton pants. There was a dense covering of coal dust on his skin and his eyes were open, staring. From behind the gates a woman wailed. Jack looked up and saw there was already a knot of them standing there; they must have come the minute they heard the hooter.

  The motor ambulance came and the gates were opened for it but the men who had brought the boy out of the pit were shaking their heads at the driver.

  ‘The lad’s a goner,’ one of the men who had carried the stretcher was saying. The boy had been taken into the Ambulance room, out of sight of prying eyes.

  ‘What was his name?’ Jack asked the manager.

  ‘Tommy Gibson,’ he replied quietly. ‘An orphan, poor little sod.’

  There was nothing more for Jack to do but climb on to the trap and go, past the few women still lingering, the unwanted ambulance. The women and the driver looked up at him impassively. A short way along the road a figure burst from the woodland path onto the road, a girl, running full pelt, her hair loosened from its grips and falling over her face and shoulders, her face a twisted mask of fear.

  ‘Whoa!’ Jack called to the pony and climbed down, not waiting until the trap came to a complete halt and consequently having to struggle to keep his balance. He managed, though, and as the girl came up he put out a hand and caught hold of her.

  ‘Elizabeth, wait!’ he cried. She looked at him and he knew she hadn’t even seen him, she was so intent on getting to where she was going.

  ‘Let me go, I have to get to the pit, didn’t you hear the hooter? Someone’s hurt, might be our Jimmy. I was told it was a lad.’

  Men were streaming out of the pit by now, the back shift, leaving the pit idle in respect for the dead boy. They came along the road in a stream, parting around Jack and Elizabeth and the pony and trap.

  ‘It’s not Jimmy, Elizabeth, do you hear me? It’s not him,’ Jack cried. She looked up at him blankly and he caught her by the shoulders and brought her to him. Some of the men looked at them curiously but went on.

  ‘Not Jimmy? How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve just come from there. It’s a boy, a young boy. But not Jimmy. His name is – was – Tommy something or other, the manager said.’

  Elizabeth sagged against him. ‘Oh, God forgive me, I can’t help but be glad. It’s not my brother, it’s another lad and I’m glad.’ She began to cry; deep, silent weeping. Around them, the men were beginning to mutter, take notice. They looked hard at Jack, not sure what to think.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Come on, into the trap. We’ll take a ride.’

  Obediently Elizabeth got up beside him. ‘Gee up,’ said Jack and the pony trotted on, away from the pit head and the pit rows, past the turnoff for the Manor and up the rise beyond, leaving the houses behind until they were out among fields, ploughed fields, ready for the spring planting, ringed with bare-branched trees and dark brown hedges. The pony had slowed to a walk up the rise and Jack let him keep his own pace. Beside him, Elizabeth shivered.

  ‘Are you cold? There’s a rug behind you.’ He found the rug and wrapped it round her; he could feel how cold she was, he had to warm her. They were entering a tiny hamlet, only a couple of farms and a few labourers’ cottages, but there was an inn, the Plough, he remembered it from before the war.

  ‘We’ll go in here, warm up, have something to eat if there is anything,’ he said.

  Elizabeth said nothing, simply sat while he got down from the trap and tied the pony to a hitching post, came around to her side to help her down.

  ‘Come on, love,’ he said. ‘You’ll catch your death if you don’t get warmed up soon.’

  Obediently she allowed him to take her arm and help her down. She was tired, suffering from the after-effects of the terrible fright she had had, running through the wood certain in her own mind that Jimmy had been injured in the pit, sure of it from the time she had heard the hooter give the signal for an accident. She had been walking in the wood, getting some fresh air after night duty on the wards, relaxing so she would be able to sleep, something she found hard in the daytime. And then the terrible sound had come and she’d remembered Jimmy was on back shift and so would be in the pit. And she had run and run.

  Now she looked at Jack as he led her into the inn, calling to the landlord for drinks, asking if there was a fire in the snug. And whether it was because her emotions were already heightened, she felt such a surge of love for him that she couldn’t bear it, it seared her very bones.

  ‘Only sandwiches, sir,’ the landlord was saying. Jack must have asked for food too. ‘Soup and sandwiches.’ She was drawn to the fire. There was an inglenook sofa to one side; the coal was crusted over, smouldering, and the landlord took a poker to it and broke it up so that it burst into flames. The warmth sprang out. Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment, feeling it, luxuriating in it.

  Jack sat down beside her, his thigh touching hers through the thickness of their clothes, but it made her tremble she was so intensely conscious of it. Her thoughts were hazy, dreamlike. The landlord brought bowls of broth, ham sandwiches, hot toddies.

  ‘Ring if you need me, sir,’ he said, giving Jack an understanding glance. ‘I’m busy in the other bar, I won’t disturb you.’

  They ate and drank, the toddy burning Elizabeth’s throat but she drank it down and the warmth of it spread through her. She was hungry, she hadn’t realised, ravenously hungry. Jack didn’t say much. He ate and drank and watched with satisfaction when she cleared her plate. And afterwards, when she sat back with a sigh, he took her hand and held it in his, bringing it to his lips and the place where they touched tingled. Dimly, she realised that she was lost, about to be drawn into that glorious experience yet again and she would regret it, oh, yes, she would regret it but she couldn’t help it. If he asked her, if he asked the landlord for a room and took her upstairs, she would go no matter how knowingly the landlord looked at them, she would go and feel no shame at all. Deep in her belly, something moved, deliriously.

  Jack didn’t ask her, not yet he didn’t. He was content to sit there with her, hold her, they had all the time in the world. They sat, their arms around each other, drowsy with the heat from the fire and the toddy and the food, in a magical world of their own, away from the cares of the war-life outside the little room.

  ‘We must have a serious talk, my love,’ said Jack. ‘We shouldn’t put it off. I don’t want to take advantage of you.’ He looked down at her face, rosy from the fire; her eyes, so dreamy, so deep a violet that they looked almost black. Liar, he thought. I do want to take advantage. I want to pick her up now and put her down on the rug and make love to her, grand and magical, perfect love. I want to pick her up and run upstairs and fling her on a bed—

  This time he was brought up short all right, the bitter memory coming that he couldn’t do that, no, never would be able to. Oh, he could pick her up all right, he could carry her, but run upstairs? He was a cripple, a man with no feet. She wouldn’t want to be tied to him, of course she wouldn’t, even if she was attracted to him. And she was, he knew that. Unless she did it from pity and he shied away from the thought. Not that, never. He dropped her hand, turned away from her, closing his eyes in agony.

  Elizabeth fel
t as though she’d had cold water thrown over her. She sat up straight. What was she doing? She knew he would never marry her, where was her pride? He was an honourable man, he didn’t want to marry her and didn’t want to take advantage of her either. Most men would have taken her, she was offering herself on a platter, wasn’t she? But not Jack Benson, no, that last time had been a mistake.

  ‘I must get back,’ she said, and he made an involuntary gesture of appeal towards her but her face was averted, she wasn’t looking at him.

  ‘I must too,’ Jack said stiffly. ‘I must make sure there is a proper inquiry into that accident, I suppose there will be an inquest. He was an orphan, you know, Tommy … Tommy … Oh, for God’s sake, I can’t even remember his name!’

  ‘Tommy Gibson? It wasn’t Tommy Gibson? Oh, no, it can’t be, surely?’

  ‘That was it, yes,’ said Jack. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Jimmy’s best marra – he was Jimmy’s best marra! Of course I knew him, he was in the Home with us. I must go back, I must see Jimmy,’ she cried. ‘Oh, God, how selfish I am. How must he be feeling? His best friend killed and I’m not there for him. Oh, poor Tommy, poor Tommy, he had no one but us, no one. He was a foundling. He and Jimmy started work at the pit together.’

  Elizabeth had jumped up, she was making for the door. Then she realised where she was and turned to Jack. ‘Don’t you understand? I have to go. Now.’

  ‘Put your coat on first, Elizabeth.’ He was on his feet too, picking up both their coats. ‘Look, don’t worry, I’ll take you, of course I will.’

  They were soon rattling down the road to Morton Main in the gathering twilight. At the end of West Row he stopped and Elizabeth jumped down.

  ‘You can’t come in, not today,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be welcome today.’ She wasted no time in explaining that statement but ran down the row, disappearing into Mrs Wearmouth’s back yard.