A Mother's Courage

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Flaming swine!’ said Ben, ‘It’s enough to make a saint swear.’

  He was not a tall man, few pitmen who had been in the pits since they were small were, but he had massive shoulders and arms from the days when he had swung a pick in a three-foot seam as a hewer and his neck bulged. It bulged now with emotion and his face was red with anger.

  ‘Mind, if I could get hold of him, I’d wring his neck,’ he said, his fists clenching and unclenching.

  ‘I don’t think he’ll come here,’ said Mary, though to tell the truth she was not completely confident. There was always a little niggle of worry at the back of her mind. ‘Mr Tait says my bit of money wouldn’t make it worth his while.’

  ‘But Ruth, he wouldn’t claim the bairn?’ asked Ben. He was thinking that the law didn’t favour runaway wives. ‘He can say you ran away from him, he’s your husband after all.’

  ‘He was, he’s not now,’ said Mary, and turned away with an air of finality. ‘Eeh, Ben, let’s forget about it now. I’ve told you about it. I don’t want to talk about it any more.’

  ‘Aye, you don’t want to get upset and then upset little Ruth an’ all. Howay, we’ll walk down the garden, mebbe take her a walk out across the fields.’

  ‘You go, I’ll help Elizabeth with the dishes.’

  Mary felt all churned up and emotional; she would welcome not having to talk to Ruth, the small girl could be so perceptive sometimes.

  There was a brownstone sink set in the scullery cum pantry, and Ben had rigged up one of the new-fangled geysers above it, fuelled with coal gas piped from the pit. Mary exclaimed over it as Elizabeth filled a dish in the sink and began to wash the dishes.

  ‘He’s a clever lad, your brother, you know,’ Elizabeth said proudly as she handed Mary a tea cloth. ‘Mind, it’s grand, it’s so handy.’

  Ben came in with Ruth clutching a twist of paper filled with black bullets and her eyes shining.

  ‘Uncle Ben says I can come next week and bring Francis William and show him the ducks,’ she cried. ‘I told Uncle Ben I was going to marry Francis William when I grow up so he said mebbe he’d better meet him and make sure he was good enough for me.’ She giggled.

  ‘Well, come on now, it’s time to go back to Hetton,’ said Mary, once again wondering how Ruth was going to take it when the Taits went back to Fiji. Some of it must have showed in her face, for when Ben brought his trap round to the front of the house ready to take them into Bishop Auckland for the train, he took her aside while Elizabeth was saying goodbye to Ruth.

  ‘Don’t worry about nowt, Mary, it’ll be all right. I remember you used to worry all the time about Prue and me. Ruth will soon forget, she’s young enough and she’ll have plenty playmates when she goes to school. As for the other, forget about him, I say.’

  Mary looked at him with a rush of affection. Ben had been taciturn as a boy and she hadn’t often known what he was thinking. But he’d made a fine man, and no mistake about it.

  ‘I’m glad I came, Ben,’ she said. ‘It’s grand to have you to talk to, you’re so sensible.’

  Ben coughed, flicked the reins and they set off at a trot for the town and the railway station. ‘Come back any time you like,’ he called as his sister and niece climbed on to the train. ‘Elizabeth and me, we like to have you.’

  ‘Uncles are nice,’ observed Ruth as the train gathered speed and she leaned against Mary sleepily.

  Francis and Eleanor and the boys had been out for the day too. Francis had paid Eleanor’s brother James his wages for the week so that he could stay away from work and show them round in his trap. Today they had been to Durham city and the boys were full of it when the party met up for supper in the upstairs dining room at the Colliery Inn.

  ‘We went to the cathedral,’ said John.

  Francis William spread his arms as wide as they would go. ‘It’s big, really big, bigger than any place in London,’ he told Ruth.

  ‘Now then, don’t exaggerate,’ Eleanor reproved him. ‘It is big though.’

  ‘And we had a picnic by the river and I saw a water vole and there were races on the river, row boats, they were with men from the university, Daddy said. But they couldn’t go as fast as Mala and his men,’ he added reflectively. ‘Their rowboats weren’t so good, and the men weren’t so strong as the warriors at home.’

  This is home, Eleanor wanted to say but didn’t. The longer they stayed in England the more Fiji seemed distant; she had said as much to Francis in bed the night before.

  ‘Well, it is distant,’ he had answered, smiling.

  ‘No, but – I mean distant, unreal, nothing to do with us,’ she had insisted.

  ‘We can’t stay here much longer,’ he warned her. ‘Don’t let Fiji get too unreal.’

  Eleanor was so much better, though, he thought to himself after she had gone to sleep. He lay and listened to her regular breathing and thought about what to do. Fiji didn’t suit Eleanor; ten years there had been enough for her. If she went back, her health could be broken for good. Should he ask for a transfer to Australia? Somewhere in the south, perhaps, somewhere where the climate was more like England’s. But he wouldn’t say anything to Eleanor until he was sure. He had thought of it at supper that day as the children fell over each other to tell of their activities.

  ‘Eat your suppers, now,’ Mary was admonishing them. ‘You’ve plenty of time to talk after.’

  If they transferred to Australia, perhaps he could manage another month at home before going, thought Francis. Or even two. There was certainly plenty to keep him busy in the circuit here; all the smaller churches wanted him to give a talk on his work in Fiji and all the women’s groups wanted Eleanor to talk to them too.

  He glanced across at his wife, who was talking to Mary, her face animated and fresh colour in her cheeks, no doubt from her afternoon by the river at Durham. He couldn’t jeopardise her health by taking her back to Fiji, he realised, of course not, the Lord wouldn’t want him to. He would write to the Wesleyan Missionary Society in Australia tomorrow.

  Eleanor was telling Mary about the day in Durham all right, but she was not discussing the relative merits of the cathedral or the beauty of the river walks or even the excitement of the races between the undergraduates on the Wear. She was telling her of the line of children she had seen being led out of the workhouse on their way to the National School.

  ‘Oh, Mary,’ she said. ‘I was glad the children were with Francis, he had gone down to Elvet to see the new chapel they have built. It was just James and me, we were buying fruit on the market, for the picnic, you know.’ She paused and gazed for a moment at her own children, plump and healthy as they were, thank the Lord.

  ‘They looked like little old men, the boys, in their fustian trousers, mostly too big for them and the girls in shapeless grey frocks and pinafores. They weren’t allowed to talk and I didn’t see a single smile.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mary. ‘You knew the workhouses were there, why, man, can you not remember how I fought to keep our Ben and Prue out of it? And Mam, too, when she was so bad after Da was killed in the pit.’

  ‘I can. But do you know, I thought, why, the children on Fiji are better off. At least they’re warm and there’s plenty to eat.’

  ‘Aye. Well, it’s the way of the world.’ Mary’s face was hard; no doubt she was remembering the bad times herself, Eleanor thought. It was strange, but it was only now, when she was older and a mother herself, that she could really appreciate what Mary had gone through.

  Perhaps it was the influence of Grandmother Wales, who firmly believed that if her family could raise itself out of poverty then any family could. But, of course, that wasn’t true.

  ‘There’s a lot of distress about,’ said Mary. ‘I dare say the soup kitchens are as busy as ever. Not so much in Hetton now, the pit’s doing well, but in some of the villages we came through, I noticed. And mind, the middens! Don’t they smell worse than anything in Fiji? I’m sure they can’t be healthy. An’ do you know
, there’s cholera in Sunderland? Came in on one of the ships, I should think. Any road, they all have to lime-wash their houses and there’s a call for something to be done about the middens. I saw it in the paper.’

  Their conversation was cut short as the children claimed their attention but Eleanor had decided she would look closer at what was going on in the pit rows of Hetton. Perhaps she could do something for the people. After all, she had a great deal of experience in nursing now, hadn’t she?

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Francis, when she broached the subject that night. ‘You have just been ill yourself, Eleanor. In any case, we won’t be here long enough for you to make much difference.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing. You heard what I said.’

  Eleanor held her peace; she had her own ideas of what she was going to do but there was no sense in upsetting Francis by telling him she was determined.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  ‘I’d forgotten about the wind blowing off the North Sea,’ said Eleanor, snuggling down behind a sand dune and pulling her wraps close about her.

  ‘Straight from the Arctic, I think,’ said Francis.

  They were spending the afternoon at Easington, a pretty little seaside village with an unspoilt sandy beach.

  ‘I want to go to the seaside,’ John had said that morning and so here they were, only a few miles from Hetton but ten degrees colder.

  The boys were down by the water’s edge; they had wanted to bathe but Eleanor had taken one look at the whitecap waves on the sea and forbidden it. In the end she had allowed them to take off their boots and stockings and try paddling.

  ‘I’d forgotten all about the sea coal too,’ Francis remarked to Eleanor’s brother. He gazed out over the beach at the black lines left by the outgoing tide.

  It’s clean enough, it won’t hurt the lads,’ said James Saint.

  ‘Why, no, I know that, I was brought up here too, you know. Oh, look here come the sea coalers.’

  Carts were coming down the path to the beach, each with a couple of men wielding shovels and carrying sacks. They spread out over the beach and began to collect the sea coal.

  ‘There must be an outcrop offshore,’ Eleanor’s brother said.

  ‘I think I’ll go down and have a word with the men,’ Francis decided. ‘Coming?’

  ‘No, I’ll stay with Eleanor.’ James Saint pulled his cap down low over his forehead and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket. He had taken the week away from the pit so that he could show his sister and Francis round and he was enjoying the holiday himself. But he couldn’t see the attraction of standing about on an exposed beach with the wind blowing the water into spray and the sand into his face. It was a sight warmer in the pit, and that was a fact.

  Francis walked up to the nearest couple of sea coalers and stood watching them for a minute or two. They worked in silence, picking up the larger pieces of coal, washed smooth as worked jet by the action of the waves, and shovelling up the smaller pieces and putting them in a sack. They worked silently and skilfully, managing to pick up the coal and taking very little sand with it.

  The men took no notice of Francis at first, not even pausing in their work. By their side the grey pony—it couldn’t have been more than twelve hands, Francis guessed, but broad and sturdy, probably an ex-pit pony—stood quietly, its head down. When an area was cleared, it moved forward itself without any prompting from the men.

  ‘You don’t work in the pit, then,’ said Francis at last, un-nerved by the silence. Both men cast him an expressionless glance. What a fool, he thought, of course they don’t. Why would they be gathering sea coal if they did? He tried again.

  ‘Do you live in Easington?’

  The older of the two men straightened up, lifted the sack he had been filling and slung it on the cart. Automatically, the pony moved on a few feet.

  ‘Well, Minister,’ he said, ‘seeing as you’re interested, aye, we live in Easington. An’ would we be working down the pit when we’re fishermen? We gather the sea coal an’ all, we’ve always gathered the sea coal; our family, we have a right. We use it oursel’s and sell the rest. There now, is that what you wanted to know?’

  Francis was not put off as the men turned back to their work.

  ‘The money must be useful to your families when the weather’s too bad to put to sea,’ he commented.

  ‘Look, Minister, if you’re looking to see us in chapel, you’re wasting your time. The only light I’m glad to see is the harbour light when we’re coming back in with full nets.’

  Eleanor, sitting behind her dune with her brother, heard the last part of the conversation and was full of indignation. Heathens! Why, they were more heathen than the islanders of the South Seas. Well, it was time to bring the boys away from the water line and dry their feet, they must be frozen.

  She struggled to her feet, hampered by her skirts, and looked down to the water, but the boys were already coming and even from a distance their feet were red with the cold. Francis was still with the sea coalers, she noticed, going further along the sands. One of them had even loaned him a shovel and he was having a go at separating the coal from the sand, not very successfully as far as she could see.

  ‘Francis has a way with him, all right,’ said her brother, shaking his head. ‘Those folk have a name for keeping to themselves, they don’t mix with the pitfolk at all.’

  Then the boys were there, jumping up and down on a rock to get the sand clinging to their feet to dry before putting on their stockings and boots.

  ‘Mind, it’s not so cold once you get used to it,’ said young John. ‘Not warm like the sea at Bau either. Where are we going now, Uncle James?’

  ‘Nay lad, that’s up to your father, I go where I’m told,’ he answered.

  Francis came up looking well pleased with himself.

  ‘I doubt if you made any converts there,’ said James Saint, nodding his head at the sea coalers, their cart loaded with dirty-looking sacks, as they trundled off the beach.

  ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways,’ Francis replied. ‘They are coming to hear all about our experiences in Fiji at any rate. I’m to speak at Easington Chapel tonight. They may yet see the Light. Come on now, do you think the pony won’t be too tired to take us to Hartlepool? As I remember, it’s not that far, is it?’

  ‘It’s late, Francis,’ Eleanor said firmly. ‘We can go to Hartlepool tomorrow. If you are going to preach here tonight, we’d better be going on home, don’t you think? The boys will want their tea. And James has to get back to Moorsley, don’t forget.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of the time,’ admitted Francis.

  As the trap headed for home, James Saint remarked, ‘By, you’re a born preacher though, Francis, I’ll give you that.’

  It was true, thought Eleanor, her husband would not be happy doing anything else. What would happen if his voice gave out altogether, she couldn’t bear to think.

  Mary was having the time of her life; paintbrush in hand and enveloped in a large brown apron, she was painting the door for the front room of the cottage.

  ‘Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,’ she sang as she worked, hardly knowing she was doing so. In the kitchen, the colliery joiner grinned as he measured up the back door for a new frame; the old one was rotted away at the bottom. After that he had the window frames to attend to; the upstairs ones hadn’t been opened in years, and the sashes would have to be replaced as well as one broken pane.

  Mary stopped singing and looked out of the window into the overgrown garden. Ruth was there, digging away at the weeds in a flowerbed, though sometimes a flower came up rather than a weed. ‘An accident, Mam,’ Ruth would say, holding the pansy or forget-me-not behind her back.

  Going back to her painting, Mary was relieved. Ruth had cried to go with Francis William to Easington, she had even stamped her foot in temper, but her mother had thought it was time to separate them, at least for short intervals. After all, Ruth had
enjoyed her trip to Black Boy to see Ben, hadn’t she? And Francis William hadn’t gone there. And here she was, rooting about in the flowerbed, seemingly quite content, her temper forgotten.

  Mary finished painting the door and went out to the pump to fill the kettle for tea. Standing by the pump, she looked about her; the sun was high in the sky, it must be noon, she reckoned. As if in agreement, the noise of wood being sawn at the back of the house stopped and after a moment Henry Hind, the joiner, came round the path that went round the outside of the cottage and stood by the gate watching her.

  ‘Grand day, missus,’ he said cheerfully.

  Mary picked up the full kettle and walked up to him. He was a nice-looking chap, she thought, tall with gingery hair and bright blue eyes, even though his face was covered in freckles. He spent most of his working days on the surface, keeping the mine property in good repair and sometimes fixing up the miners’ cottages, so he wasn’t as pale as most of the men of the village but had a healthy tan.

  ‘A grand day,’ she echoed as she went past him, feeling his eyes on her back, knowing he was interested in her. She could be interested in him if circumstances were different, she thought. Oh Lord, what was she thinking? She wanted no more complications in her life, no indeed.

  She entered the kitchen to put the kettle on the fire and stepped back from the range. It was a bit hot for such a fire today but she had to have it hot enough to boil the kettle. She wondered about the possibility of having gas piped from the pit – she would ask the agent tomorrow.

  ‘You should be able to move in by next week, missus,’ said Henry from behind her and she jumped. She hadn’t known he had followed her in.

  ‘Yes. I’ll be glad to get settled,’ she said and began to set the table with mugs from her basket. She had a plate and a packet of roast-beef sandwiches that the landlady at the Colliery Inn had provided, for a price, and she laid these out too.

  ‘Would you like a sandwich?’ she asked Henry.

  ‘Thanks, missus, I’ve brought me own bait,’ he replied and took out a miner’s bait, or sandwich tin, from the large pocket in his jacket, which was hanging on the handle of a broom just inside the door. He sat down on an upturned box and opened the tin, taking out doorstep cheese sandwiches.