A Mother's Courage

by Maggie Hope

  Fascinated, Eleanor forgot herself and leaned in past the door frame to get a better look. The bricks had been scrubbed only that morning, she could tell, for they were still damp and there was a distinctive smell of lye soap. The walls were lime-washed, as indeed she had known they would be, for Uncle John had issued an order that all the cottages had to be as a guard against the cholera. He even supplied the powdered lime, as it could be bought cheaply from a shed in the colliery yard.

  ‘Who’s there? Is that you, Mary?’

  Eleanor jumped back as the quilt on the bed moved and the thin figure of a woman appeared, sitting up against the black-painted bars of the bedhead.

  The woman peered at the door. ‘Mary? Did you find any mushrooms? By, I could really fancy a few done on the griddle with a bit of bread. Have you got the bairn with you?’

  Eleanor stepped forward into the room. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Buckle, it’s not Mary, it’s me. I was just passing and I—’

  ‘Come closer, will you? I can’t see a thing in this half-light, that window gets covered in mud every time a cart passes however often Mary washes it. I’m sorry, I can’t tell who it is from your voice, like.’

  ‘Eleanor Saint, Mrs Buckle, I used to go to Sunday School with Mary. I’m here visiting my uncle at the viewer’s house.’

  ‘Betty Wales’s lass are you? I remember Betty Wales when her da was nobbut a pitman. He did well for himself, he did.’ Mrs Buckle had slid down the bed and her voice was becoming weaker and more threadlike. The brief interest she had shown in Eleanor was fading and she said fretfully, ‘Our Mary should have been back afore now. I wonder where she’s got to? I’m fair clammed for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Well, shall I put the kettle on for you? I can make you some tea,’ offered Eleanor. Mrs Buckle roused herself to give a short laugh.

  ‘Aye, I’m sure, lass, an’ if you can find a few tea leaves in the caddy you can do it.’

  Eleanor looked about her for the tea caddy. There was a wooden shelf over the fireplace and a battered wooden box standing on it but when she looked inside it was quite empty. She felt a fool.

  ‘Oh, you mean you have no tea,’ she said, a little lamely.

  Mrs Buckle was lying back, her eyes closed and her face as white as the bleached flour sack that acted as a pillow slip but she managed to smile faintly and nod her head. Eleanor was at a loss; she could go back to the village and buy a twist of tea – Grandmother had an account with Mrs Lambton’s grocery shop just as she had with the apothecary and Mr Sweeney the book seller. She hesitated, knowing she was already late in getting back with the lavender water. But surely it was her Christian duty to do something to help Mrs Buckle? Her dilemma was ended as Mary came in the door, holding little Prue’s hand. She had a cloth bag slung around her neck bulging with what Eleanor took to be mushrooms and in her other hand she carried a pail of water. Prue was hanging back and whimpering softly to herself but the sisters both came to a halt as they saw Eleanor, standing awkwardly by the bed.

  ‘Miss Saint!’ exclaimed Mary, the first to find her voice. ‘What are you doing here?’ She placed the pail of water by the hearth and the cloth bag on the table. Prue clambered on to the bed beside her mother and turned hopeful eyes on Eleanor.

  ‘Cake?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no I haven’t—’ Eleanor began but Mrs Buckle interrupted.

  ‘Prue, don’t ask for nowt, I’ve told you before,’ she said sharply.

  ‘I have nothing,’ Eleanor finished, ‘or I’d gladly give it to you.’ She turned to Mary, who was regarding her steadily even while she was ladling water from the pail into the iron kettle and settling it on the smoking fire. ‘I … I’ve been on an errand for Grandmother, your door was open as I was going past, so I …’

  ‘You came in, miss. Well, that’s all right, our door is always open like most of the folks’ around here, but for the gaffer’s, like.’

  Eleanor blushed, remembering the reception Mary and Prue had received earlier at the back door of the Lyon viewer’s house before she had intervened. But she held her head high. ‘I thought to help your mother,’ she said simply.

  Mary sighed. ‘Aye, I’m sorry, miss. But I have a lot to do. Ben, that’s my brother, he’ll be coming in off the fore shift and you can see how Mam’s held, her sight’s going now and her head’s bad all the time. Laudanum helps, but we can’t buy much. The doctor says something’s growing in her head as shouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, how aw—’ Eleanor gave a horrified glance to the woman in bed, who seemed to have dropped into a doze, forgetting her fancy for mushrooms. Looking down at the parcel in her hand, she had an idea and held it out to Mary.

  ‘Grandmother swears by this for her headaches. I’m sure she won’t mind if I give it to Mrs Buckle when she is so ill.’

  Mary looked doubtfully at the parcel. ‘What is it, miss?’

  ‘Just lavender water. It may help. You should dampen a cloth with it and smooth it on to your mother’s temples. Look, I’ll show you.’ Eleanor opened the tiny parcel and looked around for a cloth. Seeing none, she took out her own dainty handkerchief, wet it with lavender water and, going over to the bed, gently wiped the invalid’s head. Mrs Buckle sighed gratefully and opened her eyes for a moment. Eleanor was shocked to see how cloudy they were, how sightless they looked. The smell of lavender hung in the air, overlaying that of lye soap and damp.

  ‘I’ll leave it here, Mary,’ said Eleanor and placed the bottle on the table. ‘I have to go now, Grandmother will be waiting.’

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ Mary said simply as she went with her to the door. A small boy was just entering. Ben, Eleanor supposed, for he was dressed in old clothes stiff with coal dust and on his head he had a leather helmet with a holder for a candle. Though there was little to be seen of his skin through the layers of dirt, his eyelids were drooping wearily and his shoulders bowed like those of an old man.

  ‘This is Miss Saint, Ben,’ said Mary and the boy nodded and walked past them to the chair by the fire and slumped down on it.

  ‘It’s a long shift for him, he’s only eight, Miss,’ Mary apologised for him. ‘He’s a trapper boy, like, down the Lyon.’

  Eleanor nodded; of course, she had seen many young pit lads, she saw them every day. It was a hard life for a boy but trapper boys were necessary in a mine; Uncle John had explained to her they were needed to keep a flow of good air in the tunnels of the mine. She said goodbye to Mary and sped back to the apothecary’s shop in Front Street.

  ‘What have you been doing, Eleanor? You’ve been gone almost two hours!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Grandmother.’ Eleanor stood before her grandmother in the dining room. Uncle John was already sitting at table and Jane was serving him beef soup from a large tureen.

  He looked at Eleanor’s face, pink with rushing back up the lane on her clumsy pattens, and smiled. ‘There’s no harm done, Mother,’ he said. I’m sure Eleanor has enjoyed her morning out in the fresh air instead of being confined to the house all day. Perhaps she met a friend, someone her own age to talk to.’

  ‘You haven’t been mixing with the people from the colliery rows, have you, Eleanor?’ Mrs Wales asked sharply. ‘Did you meet someone and talk?’

  Eleanor studied the red roses in the carpet before answering. If she said she had been talking to a friend from Sunday School it might do but Grandmother might ask who it was and then there would be trouble – she would probably be confined to the house for the rest of her stay. Her mind flew back over her outing and she remembered the minister.

  ‘I met Mr Nelson. He inquired after you, Grandmother. I thought I would offer to help at the chapel supper tonight, if you will allow it.’

  ‘There, you see, Mother. A perfectly innocent outing. Now do come to the table, Eleanor, the soup’s getting cold and I’m ready to say grace.’

  Uncle John drove her to the Wesleyan chapel that evening, on his way to a meeting of his fellow colliery managers. The night had turned cold and frosty and Eleano
r was glad of her warm cloak and the rug to put over her knees. As they came to a halt before the chapel, she saw there was quite a queue of people waiting and the stewards were ushering them forward into the schoolroom.

  ‘I’ll come back for you, my meeting won’t take more than an hour,’ said Uncle John as he handed her down on to the flags at the entrance and walked with her to the door. Eleanor was very conscious that all heads were turned towards them as they went past the queue. Why didn’t the stewards let them in faster? she thought. It was so cold outside, the mud in the lane was already icing over, and some of the children had bare feet.

  Inside, the schoolroom trestle tables were set out with barely space for two people to pass between them. The benches around them were filling up rapidly and Eleanor had to gather her skirts around her to make her way down to the serving table by the platform.

  Mr Nelson stood by the table with Mr Briggs, a portly man with side whiskers and thatch of grey hair. Eleanor knew him slightly, for he was a lay preacher and she had heard him preach in the chapel at home. Beside him stood a young boy, half a head shorter than she was herself, fresh-faced and earnest-looking.

  The smell coming from the cauldron of broth that stood in the middle of the table made Eleanor feel slightly queasy: boiled turnips and cabbage mingling with the greasy ham bones.

  ‘Oh, Miss Saint,’ said Mrs Nelson, who was standing behind the table, enveloped in a large apron and with a ladle in her hand. ‘Have you come to help? God bless you, my dear. We are few in number tonight, the weather being so bad. Some ladies don’t like to venture out in the dark winter nights. And there is quite a crowd to serve, is there not? You know Mrs Herrington, do you?’

  The apothecary’s wife paused in her task of cutting thick slices of bread and piling them on plates and smiled at Eleanor. ‘Perhaps you will serve the tea?’ she said.

  ‘Of course,’ said Eleanor. She took off her cloak and hung it on one of the hooks to the side of the stage. Putting on the apron she had brought with her, she took her place behind the copper tea urn.

  The schoolroom was full by this time and the stewards were ushering the last of the queue into the chapel itself, where extra tables had been erected. At last, everyone was inside and the doors closed. The buzz of conversation died down and all eyes looked to the platform as Mr Nelson climbed up, followed by the young boy.

  ‘Good evening, friends,’ said the minister. ‘Some of you will know Master Francis Tait, grandson of Mr Briggs. I am happy to announce that he has decided to give his heart to the Lord and become a lay preacher. I am sure you will join with me in wishing him every success. Now, Francis will offer thanks for God’s goodness in providing this food for our use.’

  Eleanor stole a quick glance at the boy on the platform before bending her head for the prayer and was surprised to find him regarding her with steady brown eyes. Their gazes locked for a brief second before he turned calmly away and began to speak.

  Chapter Two

  ‘I believe we have a thief in the house, John,’ said Grandmother Wales.

  Eleanor stopped eating her breakfast of bacon and eggs and placed her knife and fork carefully side by side on the plate. Cautiously, she looked up at her grandmother to find that lady not looking at Uncle John, but staring icily at herself. Blushing furiously, she raised her napkin to her face.

  ‘Surely not, Mother,’ Uncle John said, sounding very surprised. ‘The maids have been with us for years and they have always been honest before, haven’t they?’

  ‘I’m not talking about Phoebe or Jane,’ said Mrs Wales, still keeping gimlet eyes on Eleanor. ‘Nor Mrs Green.’

  ‘Who then?’

  Instead of answering her son’s question, Mrs Wales spoke to Eleanor. ‘Have you something to tell us, Eleanor?’ Pointedly, she picked up two accounts that had been delivered with the morning post. Miserably, Eleanor saw the headings: one was from Mr Herrington, the apothecary, and one from the village grocer.

  ‘Eleanor? What is this all about?’ asked Uncle John. Eleanor was dumb, though her mind was racing furiously.

  ‘Someone has been acquiring goods at the village shops and putting them on my account,’ said Mrs Wales. And I’m sorry to say, it must have been Eleanor as it is she who has undertaken the marketing this last month.’

  ‘Eleanor? Come now, you can tell us if it’s not true, perhaps the tradesmen have made a mistake.’ Uncle John wiped his moustache with his napkin and waited for Eleanor to speak. He ignored his mother’s loud snort.

  ‘I … I can’t say that, Uncle John,’ Eleanor said at last. ‘I’m sorry, I just didn’t think—’

  ‘You didn’t think you would be found out?’ Grandmother said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘You think I am so bad a housekeeper that I don’t check the accounts? You are a thief, girl, you will burn in hell! Though God knows what you wanted with a pound of candles and a stone of flour. Not to mention a bottle of laudanum from Mr Herrington.’

  ‘I’m not a thief! I will pay you out of my allowance, it’s due any day now. I needed the goods for a friend, someone who is ill. Doesn’t the Bible tell us to feed the hungry and help those who are ill?’

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that! Preaching to your own grandmother about the Book! Go to your room, girl, you can stay there until I can arrange for you to go back to your mother. Perhaps she will have more success than I in controlling you.’ Mrs Wales was trembling with rage, she clutched her napkin so tightly in her hand that her knuckles gleamed white in contrast to the alarming flush that enveloped her face and neck.

  ‘Mother, Mother, calm yourself, you’ll be ill,’ Uncle John said urgently. ‘You know the doctor said you must stay quiet with no excitement.’ He looked across at his niece. ‘Eleanor, do as she says now, go to your room. I will speak to you this evening, when everyone has calmed down. Go now.’

  ‘I’m not a thief,’ said Eleanor stubbornly.

  Mrs Wales started up from her chair, raising her hand as though to strike her. ‘No, and you’re not too old for a beating, my girl! By, if I was but a few years younger I’d—’ Her face had turned an unhealthy shade of red and her usually carefully cultivated speech had slipped, her vowels broadening as her voice rose. Eleanor remembered that Grandmother’s father had been a hewer down the pit.

  ‘Mother, sit down.’ Uncle John kept his voice calm and deliberately low as he moved to his mother’s side and put his arm around her and forced her back into her seat. ‘Eleanor, go now, I say.’

  Eleanor stood for a second, her face flaming, her mouth open to protest, before turning on her heel and racing out of the room and up the stairs. She banged the door of her room shut behind her and flung herself on to her bed. Rage flooded through her, a rage every bit as high as her grandmother’s and all the more so because she knew herself in the wrong. But what was she supposed to do? She had no money of her own and since her mother had gone to live with her older brother Tom and his wife Charlotte, earlier in the year, her allowance had been cut drastically; it barely covered her dressmaker’s bills, small though they were.

  She thought about Grandmother’s threat to send her back to her mother – surely she would not do so. In Charlotte’s house she would be worse off than she was here in Hetton-le-Hole. She would be expected to act as unpaid nursemaid to her spoilt little niece and nephew, Alice and Albert, and she couldn’t bear the thought.

  ‘Please, God,’ she prayed aloud, ‘don’t let Uncle John send me away. I won’t put another thing on Grandmother’s accounts, really I won’t.’ She paused for a moment and shook her heavy hair back from her forehead, the better to be able to think. What would happen to the Buckles if she couldn’t help them any more? Ben was growing older but it was still a long time before he would be earning a man’s wage and the few shillings he got as a trapper boy were not enough to keep the family. And Mary, now, she could work, it was true, but what about young Prue and her mother if Mary wasn’t there to see to them? Truly, it was a great problem, one she c
ouldn’t answer.

  Rising from the bed she went to the window and looked out on the green paddock that lay at the back of the house with trees and bushes at the side planted by Grandfather Wales to screen the ugly pithead and slagheap and, most especially, any view of the colliery rows.

  If only she had been born a boy, she thought miserably. Then she could have gone to Durham University and become a doctor – oh, how she had wanted to do that. She had thought that Uncle John would understand, he was so different to how her father had been – until the day she mentioned it to him and he had smiled gently at her and told her it was impossible. He had explained to her that men liked ‘good’ girls rather than clever ones and she had had to clench her hands until the nails bit into her palms to stop herself from screaming at him. Here they were into the second half of the nineteenth century and women in England were as much slaves as those poor black folk in America.

  ‘Flaming hell!’ she said loudly and then looked apprehensively at the door. Had someone heard her? And if they had, what would happen then? She’d likely be turned out of the door without a penny, why she might have to earn a living on the coal screens at the pit head. She had seen girls there, as black as the stones they were picking out of the coal; in fact, it had been from them she had heard the swear words. The upstairs hall was silent, however; no one had heard her. ‘Flaming hell!’ she said again, quieter this time. The words expressed how she felt so perfectly and she didn’t care how wicked they were. Shaking her hair back from her face yet again, for it had already fallen out of its restraining ribbons, Eleanor glared out of the window for a moment before going back to her bed and flinging herself down on it again. She was still there when Uncle John knocked at the door at four o’clock.