A Mother's Courage

by Maggie Hope

  Next morning, Mrs Butts, the landlady, had breakfast ready for them at eight o’clock. Bacon, sausage, eggs and fried bread, and the smell completely smothered any other that might be about. And so nostalgic it was, that Eleanor felt that if she closed her eyes she would be back in the viewer’s house of Lyon Pit with Uncle John at the head of the table and Grandmother Wales ringing her bell imperiously for her tray to be taken up.

  ‘Where are we going today?’ asked John.

  ‘Not far,’ said Eleanor. ‘Today is a day for resting, I think. Perhaps a walk round the village.’

  Mary had other ideas and she couldn’t wait to put her own plans in action. ‘If you don’t mind, I thought I would go to see my brother, Ben. You know, he’s overman at Black Boy now, over by Bishop Auckland. Then I’ll be free to start looking for a house.’

  ‘Black Boy? Isn’t that a long way from Hetton? You’ll have to go into Durham and take a train to Auckland and then I don’t know how you’ll get out to Black Boy.’ Francis had a map of the county open on the table before him. ‘Look, you see what I mean. It will take hours, Mary.’

  It was true, she saw, feeling dampened; somehow she had thought it was fairly close. After all, didn’t Black Boy have the same owner or general manager or something?

  ‘You’re right,’ she conceded. ‘Well then, today I’ll look for a house.’

  Eleanor laughed. ‘Oh, Mary, you haven’t a minute to spare, have you?’ Mary hadn’t; she felt an overwhelming need to be settled, to buy her house and furnish it before her good fortune was snatched away. Even her shopping spree in London had gone stale on her; she ended up buying only a couple of outfits each for herself and Ruth, wanting to be on her way north.

  ‘Goodness gracious!’ exclaimed the old man standing under the newly painted sign that proclaimed ‘T.G. Herrington, Chemist.’ ‘It’s Miss Saint, isn’t it? All grown up and with a husband and family. I remember now, you married Mr Briggs’s grandson, didn’t you, and went off to foreign parts?’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Herrington.’ Eleanor smiled. ‘What a good memory you do have. Yes, I married Mr Tait and we went to Fiji. This is my family, the boys, that is, Ruth is the daughter of Mary Buckle, you remember Mary Buckle?’

  Mr Herrington looked vague. ‘Er … well, you’ll find nothing much has changed in Hetton. There is a move to have the road made up but it moves slowly, yes indeed.’

  Eleanor looked ruefully at her shoes and the hem of her dress, all spattered with mud. As for Francis William’s boots and Ruth’s too, it was best not to look. ‘Yes, well, I’ll see you again, Mr Herrington,’ she said and shepherded her charges into the general store next door. They all had to have pattens to keep their feet out of the mud.

  Mary followed them in, her cheeks red and her eyes sparkling with suppressed excitement. She had her skirt bunched up and held high above the dirt of the street, showing a pair of sensible black boots and white clad ankles. But her skirt was of black bombazine and her bodice slim-fitting and stylish, with sleeves that came down to the wrists and ended in fine lace. Over it all, to protect herself from the cold, she wore a shawl just as all the other women in the shop, but hers was not knitted from undyed grey shoddy but fine, black wool.

  ‘Eleanor?’ Her eyes skimmed over the open-mouthed women until she saw Eleanor and the children at the back of the shop, trying on pattens. ‘Eeh, I thought I’d missed you for a minute.’ She pushed her way through to the back, past the piles of galvanised dishes and pans, past cans of coal oil and scrubbing brushes, hard yellow soap, and brushes and shovels.

  ‘By, Eleanor, you know that cottage down by Easington Lane, the one by itself with a garden round? It’s got a “For Sale” notice on it an’ I went to see the agent and, Eleanor, it’s only a hundred and twenty pounds, even with the paddock at the back. By, I think I’ll have it, Eleanor, I do.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should look at some more before you make up your mind? You don’t have to buy here, do you, what about the coast? I thought you were going to look about there?’ Eleanor was taken aback by Mary’s hurry; she knew she was enthusiastic but this was really going at things headlong.

  ‘You wanted to see some by the sea—’ Eleanor stopped talking abruptly as she noticed, over Mary’s shoulder, that practically all the women in the shop and the shopkeeper too had stopped what they were doing and were watching and listening to them.

  ‘We can talk about it later,’ she muttered and returned to tying on a patten on Edward’s foot.

  ‘Why, man,’ said Mary, ‘what’s wrong with now?’

  ‘Everybody’s watching.’

  It was John who gave her her answer, his face red with embarrassment to the tips of his ears.

  Mary half-turned, ‘Mind, you’re right an’ all, pet,’ she said and straightened her skirt ostentatiously and pulled her shawl round her so that the pattern could be seen to the best advantage. She raised her voice and addressed the crowd.

  ‘A very good morning to you all,’ she said.

  The women looked at each other and mumbled a greeting and then one came forward, middle-aged and shapeless and dressed in a grey skirt, which might have once been black, with a white apron in front. Her boots were black in parts but the toes were scuffed as grey as her dress and the heels practically worn down altogether. In her shawl she had a baby of about five months wrapped up tight and fast asleep against her breast.

  ‘Mary Buckle? You are Mary Buckle, aren’t you?’

  Mary gazed at her; there was something familiar about her, her eyes maybe, or the shape of her face.

  ‘Why, man, it’s Eliza Evans, isn’t it?’ she cried, suddenly remembering, and the woman nodded. ‘Eeh, I would have known you anywhere,’ Mary went on, though in reality she was horrified to see a woman who had been in her class at Sunday School looking at least fifteen years older than she actually was. To cover up her feelings, she turned to Eleanor.

  ‘Eleanor, can you remember? It’s Eliza Evans from Sunday School!’

  ‘Eliza Hopper now, missus,’ said the woman and bobbed an awkward curtsey. ‘I’m married with eleven bairns, ten living.’

  Ten, thought Eleanor. No wonder she looks so old. ‘It’s nice to meet old friends, isn’t it?’ she said, rather for something to say than anything else. ‘We just got back last night, Mary too. This is Mary’s little girl, Ruth.’

  The women stared at Ruth and Eleanor saw the child through their eyes for a minute. She was still small and doll-like for her age but she had filled out recently; her arms and cheeks were plump and a good colour from the sea voyage. She wore a wool dress and cape with a hood, good and warm, and the difference between her and the pale baby wrapped in the old grey shawl was marked.

  ‘By, Mary Buckle,’ one of the women said at last. ‘You must have done well for yourself, that’s all I can say.’ She folded her arms and her meaning look at Mary was almost accusing.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘She has, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Right enough.’

  The chorus of agreement made Mary flush.

  ‘I mind when she hadn’t two farthings to rub together.’ One woman nodded her head to emphasise her words.

  ‘Oh, come now,’ Eleanor said, stung into springing to Mary’s defence. ‘It’s not a sin to do well, is it?’

  The women were turning away, some muttering under their breath, and one whisper was a little too loud and all the shop heard.

  ‘Coming here with a bairn and no man, I can guess where she got her money.’

  Mary turned a fiery red and Eleanor seethed with anger. She might have disgraced herself by speaking her mind and so causing a scene were it not for Eliza Hopper, who hoisted her baby up in her arms and came closer.

  ‘Them’s only jealous, Mary, take no notice. That lot always were vicious tongues. They were just as bad when your Ben did so well and got his undermanager’s tickets. And I mind when I fell wrong with my first and had to wed … aye, but you don’t want to hear that. Any road,
most folk aren’t like them, they’ll be real glad you done well. I’m set up for you, I am.’

  Mary managed a small smile and murmured her thanks but she was too full of emotion to say any more and Eliza nodded again and went out.

  The morning had lost some of its sparkle after that. Eleanor paid for the pattens and they trooped out of the shop, the children walking awkwardly until they got used to this new kind of footwear. Francis William tripped over his feet and fell flat in the mud and his new suit was covered in the dirty, coaly stuff, so different from the mud by the beaches of Fiji. They had to go back to the Colliery Inn so he could change.

  Mary was silent, her enthusiasm dimmed, but she soon recovered after a sustaining cup of tea and slice of buttered teacake.

  ‘You know,’ she said to Eleanor, ‘I haven’t thought of buttered teacake for years, but now I think I must have missed it as much as anything.’ She could even laugh at her own contradictory words.

  In the afternoon they dressed in more workaday clothes and walked up the street to the corner and round to the row of cottages where Mary had lived with her family.

  ‘Look, there’s still the flagstone outside the door,’ said Mary. And so it was, but now it had a band of sandstone round it as had the step; someone had been scrubbing and sanding that morning. There was a net curtain at the window too, pale yellow where it had recently been washed with a ‘Dolly’ dye. The door was open, though there was no one to be seen and, just as she had one morning long ago, Eleanor poked her head round the door and looked at the red brick floor covered with homemade proddy matts, bright and cheerful.

  ‘Now then, were you wanting something?’

  Once again Eleanor had been caught prying; a woman had come through from the pantry, carrying a pile of loaf tins. She put them down on the scrubbed table beside an earthenware dish covered by a tea towel, obviously bread dough left to prove. Dusting her hands on her apron, she came to the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Eleanor. ‘I—’

  Mary came to her rescue. ‘We were just looking, I hope you don’t mind. But I used to live here when I was a bairn.’

  The woman smiled understandingly. She was a thin little woman, not more than five feet tall, and the apron she had on wrapped round her and overlapped so that she had to tie the strings in the front under her practically non-existent bosom. But her smile was big enough and she stepped back and invited them in.

  ‘Eeh, I know what it’s like, the men move around from pit to pit, and we have to gan wi’ them. Meself, I still have a hankering to go back to Weardale, that’s where I was brought up.’

  ‘Well, we have the children with us.’ Eleanor hesitated.

  ‘Fetch ’em in, fetch ’em in. I’ve got some stotty cake in the oven, I’m sure they could eat a morsel, I’ve got some treacle an’ all.’

  The smell of baking bread filled the room and the children followed Mary and Eleanor in and sat in a row on the horsehair sofa.

  ‘Good as gold, the canny bairns,’ said their hostess, and so they were, their eyes glued to the bread cake as she took it from the oven bottom and tossed it in a cloth before spreading pieces with treacle that melted and ran so that they had to hold the plates under their chins to catch the drops.

  ‘Emily Teesdale, I am,’ the woman said after she had seen the children served. ‘An’ where might you be from?’

  ‘Fiji,’ said Eleanor. ‘We’ve just come back from Fiji.’

  ‘Fiji? Is that in Northumberland?’ she asked the children solemnly.

  Francis William laughed and choked on his stotty cake and spluttered, ‘No, it’s miles and miles over the sea!’

  ‘Is it now? By, fancy that then, you’ve come all that way?’

  By the time the loosing whistle blew and Mrs Teesdale had got up, lifted the iron pan off the fire and taken out the meat pudding to cool, and the loaves of bread out of the oven, they were all fast friends.

  ‘Mr Teesdale will be in for his tea, he’s on back shift,’ she explained and the women rose to go. They thanked Mrs Teesdale and the children stood politely and added their thanks and promised to come back another day. They went out into the cold evening.

  ‘We didn’t get very far, did we?’ said Eleanor as they struggled back to the inn against what felt to them like a howling gale though Mrs Teesdale had termed it ‘a bit of a breeze’. But the afternoon had been just what was needed to counteract the depressing effect the women in the store had had on their spirits.

  ‘Did you have a nice day?’ asked Francis as they went in. But he didn’t need to ask, he could see by their faces they had.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  ‘I’ve bought Wood End Cottage, Ben, you know, the one at Easington Lane.’

  Mary sat across the table from her brother in his house on Coundon Road. It was a substantial stone-built house in a row with three others, all occupied by officials at Black Boy Colliery. Ben didn’t answer at first; he was filling plates with tinned salmon and fresh salad stuffs from his garden.

  Mary looked out of the sitting-room window; the garden stretched away down the bank and beyond she could see the beginning of Coundon Grange, almost at the bottom of the valley, and rising on the other side, the black ribbon through the fields that was where the old Stockton and Darlington Railway line to Shildon had run before they cut the tunnel. A nice view on a sunny day – there were one or two pitheads but even the chimneys and winding wheels looked hazy from here.

  She looked again at the sitting room they were seated in; the furniture was solid mahogany, and there was even a carpet on the floor. No eating in the kitchen when Elizabeth had company.

  Everything about the room showed that Ben was not short of a bit of cash, she thought; even the fireirons were brass instead of steel and the fender was of wrought iron, twining leaves and roses with a brass rail along the top.

  ‘By, you’ve done well, Ben, starting as a trapper boy in Lyon Pit and now an overman at Black Boy Pit,’ she said and both he and Elizabeth smiled in gratification. And he had his undermanager’s tickets an’ all, she thought. His wife Elizabeth had pointed that out, her voice full of pride. And he wasn’t thirty yet.

  Mary accepted the plate passed to her and the one for Ruth, sitting silently by her side.

  ‘Will the bairn have a glass of milk?’ asked Elizabeth. She had no children of her own and as she watched Ruth, Mary could see the yearning in her eyes. So she didn’t have everything she wanted, thought Mary, poor lass.

  Ben finished serving and bent his head to give thanks and then he was ready to respond to Mary’s surprise news.

  ‘You mean that old cottage past the old rows?’

  ‘Yes, Wood End,’ said Mary.

  ‘Oh, aye.’

  Ben took a piece of bread and butter and put it decorously on his side plate. By, thought Mary, they are out to show how they’ve come up in the world all right.

  ‘Eeh, Ben, remember when Prue broke two plates and we hadn’t enough to have our dinner on?’ she asked, mischievously. But he wasn’t put out.

  ‘Aye, I do. Sometimes it’s a good thing to remember.’ He held out his cup for Elizabeth to refill. ‘I remember going down the pit when I was not much bigger than that bairn there. I won’t forget it.’ Mary was silent, sorry she had said anything, Ben sounded so bitter.

  ‘Yes. It’s a good thing they raised the age to nine for lads to go down,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I think that’s too young an’ all.’ ‘That cottage’ll need a deal doing to it,’ said Ben.

  ‘Yes. But it belonged to the mine owners and the agent says I can have the use of the pit joiner. Any road, I thought about the coast and I went to have a look but, in the end, I thought Wood End was best. I like Hetton.’

  Ben put down his cup and sat back in his chair. He coughed self-consciously.

  ‘Where did the money come from, Mary? I mean, was your husband comfortable?’ he asked, and Elizabeth hushed him, murmuring something about it being none of their business.


  ‘No, it’s all right, Ben’s my brother after all,’ said Mary. She hesitated for a minute, deciding what to say. ‘Prue’s father was an American, he grew cotton and we had a plantation.’

  Ruth stopped eating and huddled up against Mary as she had done every other time her father had been mentioned. Ben frowned as he saw it, puzzled.

  ‘The lass misses him, I suppose,’ he said, on a rising inflection. ‘Would you like your daddy back, pet?’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘Pa was a bad man,’ she declared, her voice barely audible. Shocked, Ben looked to Mary for an explanation.

  Mary sighed; she might as well tell her brother everything. But not in front of Ruth. ‘When we’re by ourselves …’ she said and stopped. Looking down at her daughter’s head, she bent and dropped a kiss on it.

  Elizabeth was not slow to understand. She rose from the table.

  ‘Come on, Ruth, howay with me. I’m going down the garden to see to the hens. Do you know, we have some ducks an’ all, and Uncle Ben has made a pond for them to swim about in. You’d like to see them, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Eeh, yes, I would,’ said the girl and scrambled off her seat. She took Elizabeth’s hand and went out with hardly a backward glance at her mother.

  When they were alone, Mary started on the story of her marriage, right from the beginning, and she held nothing back. When she had finished, Ben went to the fireplace, took a paper spill from the holder on the mantelshelf and lit his pipe, not saying anything until it was going to his satisfaction. Then he walked to the window and looked out to the bottom of the garden where he could see Elizabeth and Ruth standing by the edge of the duck pond, throwing bits of bread for the ducks. The little girl was absorbed in the task, laughing and pointing out a particular duck to her aunt.

  ‘Do you mean to say he hit that little bairn?’ he asked, turning back to Mary.

  ‘He did,’ said Mary, ‘when I didn’t manage to shield her.’