A Mother's Courage

by Maggie Hope

  The kettle boiled and Mary made the tea.

  ‘Well, I’ll call Ruth,’ she said awkwardly and went out into the garden for her daughter. What on earth was the matter with her? she asked herself, irritated. Here she was acting like a young girl instead of a married woman with a daughter. But without a husband, she thought and shocked herself as she found herself thinking what it might be like to be wed to someone like Henry Hind. During the afternoon, she threw herself into her painting and carefully kept away from wherever the joiner was working.

  Over the next few days the cottage gradually began to look more cared for, the front gate was re-hung so that it didn’t scrape along the ground when opened and all the windows opened easily. The mason came and filled a hole in the wall of the kitchen and put in a new step by the front door. And Mr Hind – she refused to think of him as Henry – offered to paper the walls of the sitting room in his spare time so that by Tuesday evening of the next week they were covered in delicate bunches of pink roses.

  ‘We are moving in on Friday,’ Mary told Francis and Eleanor as they sat down to supper in the Colliery Inn. Francis William frowned heavily, put down his knife and fork and crossed his arms before him, something that was strictly forbidden at table. But Eleanor hadn’t the heart to say anything to him; she pretended she hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I’m pleased for you, Mary,’ said Francis. ‘It will be so much better for you when you’re in your own home.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sure you have had enough of the stench of beer for a while, as I have.’

  Mary, who in truth had given up even noticing the smell of beer or even that of the coke ovens, which hung over the village, looked from him to Eleanor.

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth … I don’t know whether you would want to—’

  ‘Mam wants to know if you would like to live with us!’ cried Ruth.

  All eyes swivelled to Mary, and even Francis William sat forward.

  ‘Oh, we couldn’t impose,’ said Francis. ‘In any case, there is hardly room enough, is there? And we will be going shortly …’

  ‘Oh yes, there are three bedrooms and Ruth can share with me,’ said Mary. ‘You have been so good to me, I would like to pay you back, why not like this?’

  ‘Why not, Francis?’ asked Eleanor and it was decided. Francis William picked up his knife and fork and began to eat.

  It was certainly an improvement on staying at the inn, thought Eleanor, as she sat on a chair in the rose-decorated sitting room and looked around her. Mary had had the whole houseful of furniture delivered from Durham, solid mahogany pieces that filled the room in the fashion of the day. The chair she was sitting on was covered in a dusty-pink moquette and it was framed in mahogany too.

  ‘Just like Grandmother Wales’s chairs,’ she murmured, touching the polished sheen of the wood.

  Mary laughed. ‘Aye, I know. I know this is just a cottage an’ all, but it doesn’t look too out of place, does it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Eleanor.

  Outside, in the garden, they could hear the voices of the children, laughing and shouting as they played some game. At least they had somewhere to play away from the eternal dust of the street, dust that turned to mud at the first shower of rain.

  Eleanor sat back in her chair, crossing her legs comfortably. The only thing that troubled her was that Francis might come in from his visit to the superintendent minister at Houghton le Spring and say they had to pack up and go back to Fiji next week or the week after that. She sighed resignedly. Of course she would go; the mission field was their life, this was only an interlude.

  But it would have been nice to find time to visit Eliza Hopper and her children, see what she could do to help them. And there were others in the village she had noticed, two little girls in one family with legs bent grotesquely with rickets, from bad feeding, she supposed. And now Francis seemed to have done all the touring around the county he wished to do, she could have visited Dr Andrews, found out what he thought about the threat of cholera sweeping through the coal field. For she knew it could happen, and if the local Board of Health thought it necessary to put up posters warning the people to take precautions, they must think so too.

  Mary’s thoughts were completely different. She loved her cottage, she loved buying things to furnish it and she didn’t care if anyone did whisper about where she had got the money from. She knew it was honestly come by, she told herself, and she didn’t care what anyone else thought. By, she had done what she intended to do and she had enough left to live on an’ all. She got to her feet and went into the kitchen for a duster and, coming back, rubbed at a speck of dust on the mahogany table. Satisfied, she took the cloth back and stood at the back door for a while, watching the children playing. They had gone through the gate to the paddock. Well that was all right, the grass had been cut only yesterday evening, Henry Hind had insisted on it.

  ‘Might as well do it, missus,’ he had said as he stood sharpening his scythe with a whetstone. And he had grinned down at her.

  Mary turned quickly and went back to the sitting room and Eleanor, feeling strangely restless. It was just because all the bustle was over now, she was settled in her little house and now she would find something else to do with her time, something genteel, to suit her position.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Ben stood before the sitting-room fireplace, his back to the blaze, his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat as he rocked gently backwards and forwards on his heels.

  ‘I will say, our Mary, you’ve picked yourself a nice canny place. You’ve made a good job of furnishing it an’ all.’ He nodded his head to emphasise his words.

  ‘I’m pleased you like it, Ben,’ his sister replied. She loved showing off her house.

  ‘It’s cold out today,’ observed Elizabeth. ‘That wind’s enough to cut you in two. Do you think it will snow?’ It was coming up to Christmas and the north-easter could be heard even inside the house, howling round the chimneys.

  Walking to the window, Ben gazed out on the road. The sky was leaden and the last of the brown leaves swirled about in the street while the mud had a coating of ice over it.

  ‘Very likely,’ he said. ‘We won’t be long in setting off back, I reckon. I’m due at the pit the night, any road.’

  ‘I’d have liked to see Ruth first,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m really sorry we missed her.’

  ‘She might not be long back,’ Mary put in. ‘She’s gone to Houghton with the Taits, they don’t usually stay out late. I’ll put the kettle on and—’

  She broke off what she was saying as the pit hooter sounded, loud and long and clear and shocking, blocking out the sound of the wind. The Buckles jumped to their feet, even Mary, who hadn’t heard the hooter sound this note since before she went to Fiji.

  ‘It’s not loosing time,’ she said, rather unnecessarily, for it was only half past two in the afternoon; of couse the shift wasn’t ended.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Ben said and headed for the door, taking his overcoat from the hook as he passed. ‘I mebbe can help.’

  The women followed him out into the street, the cold all but forgotten, and walked to the end of the road where they could see the pithead. Even as they got there, the winding wheel began to turn.

  ‘The rescue men going down?’ murmured Mary.

  ‘Mebbe,’ Elizabeth replied, tight-lipped. Both of them thought of the alternative, that they were bringing someone up, injured or dead.

  ‘We’d better get back, no sense in standing here catching our death of cold,’ said Elizabeth and they walked back to the cottage.

  ‘We’ll soon know, any road,’ she was saying as they entered the sitting room. And both women stopped dead as they saw the man, sprawled in one of the pink moquette chairs, toasting his feet before the fire.

  ‘Who the heck—’ Elizabeth ejaculated and stopped as she glanced at Mary and saw her face, white as her apron, her eyes wide and staring.

  ‘A very good afternoon to you, my dear,’ said Mor
gan, smiling lazily, not bothering to rise to his feet. ‘The door was open so I came on in. Tell me, what is all the excitement about out there? I stopped one of the peasants to ask my way and I couldn’t get a word of sense out of her.’

  ‘There’s been an accident in the pit,’ said Elizabeth, for Mary was still standing in the doorway, staring at Morgan as though he were a ghost. ‘Who might you be, any road?’

  ‘Morgan West, at your service, ma’am. I must apologise, dear … um … lady,’ said Morgan, rising to his feet and bowing elaborately, ‘for my wife, I mean, not introducing us. I’m afraid her upbringing was sadly lacking, she knows nothing of the rules of courtesy.’

  Elizabeth drew herself up and glared at him. ‘An’ neither do you, sir, that’s plain to see!’ She would have gone on at length, for she was remembering what Ben had told her about the American Mary had had the misfortune to marry and she was full of indignation. But Mary stopped her with a gesture.

  ‘What are you doing in my house?’ she asked him, her voice low and icy. ‘How did you find me? An’ any road, why did you bother to look? I thought you were finished with us, me an’ Ruth.’

  ‘My! What a lot of questions. But the main thing is, it wasn’t hard to find you and I’m here. Wilson kindly gave me the details of how you ran off with my money, you bitch.’

  Elizabeth gasped – such language and spoken in such an ordinary tone of voice, even if the accent was outlandish.

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘Did you not? No, of course, you got that mealy-mouthed preacher to do it for you, didn’t you. It was theft, you know that, don’t you? I could call the police and have you put in charge. Tait too, I daresay, have him indicted for larceny.’ He sat back down in his chair and looked around the room. ‘And this is where my money went, is it? Still, I guess I can get most of it back if I sell up. I have other uses for it. I’m certainly not going to live in a filthy mining town, not for longer than it takes to find a buyer, I’m not.’

  He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a bottle of Scotch and took a long swallow, draining it. ‘Can’t even get a decent bottle of bourbon in this Hell-hole,’ he muttered.

  ‘You’re not going to sell my house,’ said Mary. ‘You have no right, it’s mine, mine and Ruth’s.’

  Morgan’s moods were always volatile when he had been drinking and now he suddenly turned violent. Flinging the empty bottle into the hearth so that the glass shattered and spread all over the hearthrug, he jumped to his feet and grabbed Mary by her hair, pulling it away from the chignon at the nape of her neck.

  ‘You’ll mind your manners when you talk to me, bitch,’ he said savagely and swung her round so that tears sprang to her eyes with the pain. ‘You are my wife, I have every right, I can deal with you exactly as I wish.’

  ‘Leave her alone! By, if my man was here—’

  Elizabeth ran forward and beat at him with her fists and he shoved her against the wall so heavily that she was dazed for a moment and slid to the floor. A grazed bruise on her forehead began to bleed and the blood ran down a bunch of pink paper roses, turning them red.

  ‘Get out!’ Morgan shouted at her. She got to her feet unsteadily and ran for the door though the room swam about her and a dull pain had started up in her head. All she could think of was finding Ben, Ben would be able to deal with him, he couldn’t shove Ben about, no he couldn’t.

  Elizabeth’s head was beginning to clear as she stood by the gate for a few moments, trying to collect herself, for she was so dizzy she couldn’t think which way she was going. Ben, she thought numbly. Ben. And then she saw the men from the pit coming off shift, and remembered. No, they weren’t coming off shift, they had come to bank because something had happened, that was it, Ben was at the pit trying to find out what.

  Some of the men had women walking with them, looking relieved, glad and sad at the same time; she knew the look, she had seen it so often before. My man wasn’t taken, it said, praise goodness. Someone was though, poor soul, that was why the men had come out of the pit, they always did that if there was anyone killed.

  ‘Fall of stone,’ she heard one miner say. ‘Jim didn’t move fast enough.’

  All this Elizabeth’s mind registered as she hurried against the tide of miners and their wives, but for once it was secondary to the terrible need to find Ben, for if she didn’t find him soon that fiend from Hell might kill Mary.

  A thought struck her as she turned into the pit yard, a panicking thought. Suppose Ruth should walk in, what would he do to little Ruth? Eeh, man, she moaned to herself, she had seen violent men before, men in drink, men who drank their wages and then took it out on their wives and families, but she had never seen anyone quite so cold-blooded about it as Morgan.

  There were still some men in the yard. Mr Wood, the viewer, the undermanager and an overman she recognised, the deputy and a couple of hewers, likely the dead man’s marras, they would have been working with him at the coal face. There was a cart with a body on it covered with an old blanket. And Ben, talking in hushed tones to the viewer. He saw Elizabeth and took a few steps towards her.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he said. ‘An’ where’s your shawl? Do you want pneumonia?’

  ‘Ben, oh Ben, I—’

  ‘Whisht!’

  The men stepped back and doffed their caps in deference as the driver – Elizabeth saw it was Henry Hind so it must be the joiner’s cart – flicked the reins and the cart began to move out of the yard, the overman at its head. As it turned the corner and rumbled up the street, Ben watched for a few seconds and then looked at his wife and sighed.

  ‘Jim Hopper,’ he said. ‘Didn’t move fast enough, the deputy said.’

  Elizabeth nodded; they both had a fair idea why. Since he was sixteen, Jim Hopper had been a wild one, a great one for the beer. And the drink could slow a man up, if he had been drinking the night before … ‘His poor wife and all those bairns,’ she said and suddenly remembered why she was here; the tragedy of the Hopper family had, incredibly, pushed it from her mind for a minute. She caught hold of Ben’s arm, halting him in mid-stride.

  ‘Ben, oh gracious, I couldn’t tell you before, Ben, that man’s come, the American, you know, the one that wed your Mary.’

  ‘The American?’

  Ben was incredulous; his mouth dropped open and he stared at her.

  ‘Aye, Mary’s man! Eeh, you should have been there, he had hold of her by the hair and he pushed me against the wall—’

  Ben’s bellow was so loud she stopped her explanation. He had looked properly at Elizabeth for the first time and seen the bruise on her forehead, half-hidden by her hair, which had come loose from its pin.

  ‘Mary’s man? He did that? I’ll have him, by God, I’ll have him!’

  ‘Hurry up, Ben, he’s knocking her about, he’ll kill her if he’s not stopped.’

  But Ben needed no urging; he was running up the now deserted street and round the corner. Elizabeth hurried after him as fast as she could. When she got to the corner she saw Eleanor Tait and the children, her own three boys and Ruth, standing huddled together, Eleanor with her arms round Francis William and the little girl. Ruth was crying and shaking in an absolute panic of fear.

  The shouting from Wood End Cottage told the reason. It was loud enough and profane enough to bring the men off shift out of the nearest colliery houses to see what it was all about.

  ‘What’s that? Do they not know a man’s just been killed?’ one cried in outrage. ‘Is that from Mary Buckle’s place?’ He didn’t wait for the answer, which was self-evident anyway; he and his neighbour who happened to be from the end house, Emily Teesdale’s husband, strode towards the cottage, still in their pit dirt, one of them with his leather knee protectors still strapped to his legs.

  ‘Francis has gone in to try to reason with him,’ said Eleanor. ‘We weren’t here, poor Mary was on her own, dear knows what he has done to her.’

  ‘Here, let me have Ruth,’ sai
d Elizabeth. ‘I’ll take her into Emily’s for now, she wants nothing out here.’ She picked the child up and hugged her to her shoulder. ‘Whisht now, pet, don’t take on, come along o’ your Aunty Eliza now.’

  ‘Mam! Mam!’ shrieked Ruth but Elizabeth walked on and into Emily’s kitchen without so much as knocking, closing the door behind her to keep out the noise. A moment later, Emily opened it and beckoned to Eleanor and the boys and thankfully she took them inside too.

  ‘By, it’s a bad business,’ Emily said. ‘I’ll be glad when the day’s over, I can tell you. First there’s poor Jim Hopper and now—Well, I don’t know what’s happening over at Wood End but it sounds like there’s murder being done. Will I be going for the polis, do you think?’

  Elizabeth, who was sitting down by the fire with Ruth cuddled up in her arms, lifted her head. ‘Eeh, I don’t know …’

  At the same time Eleanor nodded her head. ‘I think we’ll have to.’ She sat the boys down in a row on the sofa where they sat quietly, pale-faced and solemn. ‘I’ll go now, it’s still Constable Blenkin, is it?’

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Emily.

  Eleanor pulled her wraps around her and went to the door but then had to wait to quieten Edward, who panicked afresh at seeing his mother leaving.

  ‘Sit with John, I won’t be a minute,’ she said, kissing his cheek, and slipped out into the street.

  The shouting from the cottage had died down, she thought, hesitating. Would Mary want the police involved? But then there was some banging and crashing and the tinkle of breaking glass so she lifted her skirts and ran for the police station.

  Francis was in there, she thought, fear for him rising in her, making her run harder so that when she got there she was out of breath altogether.

  Inside the cottage Francis was kneeling over the figure of Mary, who was lying motionless on the floor. He loosened the wristband of her dress and felt for her pulse – no, he couldn’t find it. He tried to find the pulse at her temple and felt a surge of thankfulness as he picked it up, weak and irregular but there and, even as he held his fingers to her head, recovering a little.