Mary helped herself to a chocolate from the box on Mildred’s bed. She wished Mildred was her mam like she’d told Nicholas. She wouldn’t have to do any work at all then and she could lord it over Eve and Nell and treat them as they deserved. And Caleb talking to her the way he had! She’d make him pay for that.
A sharp knock at the bedroom door preceded Nell opening it to say curtly, ‘You’re needed in the kitchen, Mary.’
Mildred sat up straighter in the bed. ‘She’s talking to me and it’s a private conversation if you don’t mind!’
‘She was delivering your afternoon tray and there’s work to be done. And I do mind. I mind very much when she’s shirking.’
Mary stared at her sister and with Mildred at her side dared to say, ‘Do the work yourself if you’re so bothered. I’m busy.’
Nell stared at the grossly fat figure in the bed. She didn’t doubt Mildred had been tickling Mary’s ears and making her feel sorry for herself. She was sick to death of the pair of them. ‘If you don’t come this minute I’ll tell Eve when she gets back.’
‘May I remind you your sister is not the mistress of this establishment.’ Mildred glared at Nell. ‘She takes too much on herself, you both do.’
It cut no ice with Nell. ‘It’s a good job we do, isn’t it?’ she declared boldly. ‘You wouldn’t have such an easy time of it if we didn’t. And you,’ her glare was more ferocious than anything Mildred could muster as she looked at Mary, ‘you get your backside back to the kitchen or I’ll drag you there.’
Mary only hesitated for a second. She knew Nell was quite capable of carrying out her threat. She slid off the bed and flounced past her sister into the passageway. Before Nell closed the door, Mildred spoke again, her voice holding the same imperious note. ‘I shall have something to say to my son about you.Your feet aren’t so far under the table as you’d like to think.’
For crying out loud! This old biddy was waited on hand and foot while she sat in that bed weaving her web like a great fat spider. She was as much responsible for what had happened as Mary, more so. She had fed Mary with fanciful ideas along with her boxes of chocolates from the minute they’d stepped foot in this house.The strain of the last hours and not least her worry as to what was happening with Eve and Caleb in Sunderland made Nell lose all restraint. From where she stood with her hand on the doorknob, she said, ‘You complain all you want, missus, and see if I care. And don’t think Mary’s going to have time to spare to sit and chat with you either. If she thought she was hard done by before today, she’ll soon learn she was in clover in comparison with how it’s going to be from now on.’
‘How dare you speak to me like that.’ And then as Nell made to shut the door without answering, Mildred added, ‘I know your little game, you and your sister’s, so don’t think I don’t, madam. You’ve set your stool out good and proper, the pair of you. Think you’re in clover here, don’t you? Well, Caleb’s not as daft as he looks, think on that. He wouldn’t take either of you as a wife, not in a hundred years.’
For a moment Nell was lost for words. She was barmy, Caleb’s mam. Stark staring barmy. Who had been talking about Caleb or being wed? And then unwittingly she did something which confirmed to the woman in the bed that the suspicions she’d had for some time now concerning Mary’s sisters were right. Nell laughed. A full hearty laugh. And then she shut the door on Mildred’s outraged countenance.
She was still smiling when she walked into the kitchen. ‘What were you laughing at?’ Mary asked aggressively as she took a loaf of bread out of the bread oven, slamming it on the kitchen table. ‘I can’t see anything funny in this place.’
‘Go careful with that, it’ll be nowt but crumbs.’
‘I said what were you laughing at?’
‘Your friend in there. Daft as a brush, she is. She’s of the mind me and Eve are after Caleb.’
Mary took another loaf out of the oven before she said, ‘She’s half right then.’
‘What?’ Nell stared at her sister.
‘Oh, I know you’re satisfied with your pit-yakkor but Eve likes him. She’d like nothing better than to be Mrs Travis.’
Nell snorted. ‘Don’t talk soft.’
‘I’m not talking soft.’ Mary brushed her hands down her apron. ‘She’s always liked him. Right from when we came here.’
‘As a friend, aye. We all like him as a friend.’
‘Not as a friend.’ Mary stared at her sister, a hard look. Like the night before, she appeared far older than her years. ‘I’m telling you she likes him in that way.’
‘Has she said that?’
‘Of course she hasn’t said that but I can tell. I can always tell who likes who.’
There were occasions when Nell experienced the weird notion that she was the younger sister and not Mary. This was one of those times. Almost against her will, Nell found herself saying, ‘Does Caleb like her back?’
Mary smiled scornfully. ‘Don’t be silly.’
She was a nasty little so-and-so at bottom. Nell stared at Mary’s beautiful face and in that moment she could have slapped her. In a voice throaty with emotion, she said, ‘I don’t believe for a minute Eve likes Caleb in that way. You’re just telling lies same as you always do.You wouldn’t know the truth if it rose up and bit you on the backside.’
Mary shrugged. Tipping the loaves out of their tins on to the table she didn’t look at Nell as she said, ‘Please yourself what you think, I don’t care, but I’m telling you she likes him and he’ll never like her in a month of Sundays. She’ll spend her days working her fingers to the bone for him and his mam, like you will for that pit-yakkor, given half a chance. But whereas Toby might do you the dubious honour of giving you his name, Eve’ll end up a dry old maid.’
Her voice trembling, Nell said,‘You’re spiteful, our Mary. There’s something in you that’s plain cruel.’
For a moment she thought Mary’s face was going to crumple but then her sister tossed her head. ‘Why? Because I don’t want to end up like the pair of you? I’m not going to be worn out and bitter by the time I’m thirty, Nell. I’ve seen what’s expected of miner’s wives and I don’t want that sort of life, and I don’t want to slave here for ever either.And I won’t. I won’t.’
‘You just don’t want to work at all.’
‘No, I don’t.’ Defiantly Mary faced her. ‘I want to dress nice and have pretty things and go places, what’s wrong with that? You only have one life and I don’t want to waste mine in this dirty backwater where everything revolves around the pits. I hate the pits, I hate them. They took Da and the lads and every week there’s some accident or other. If I have to stay here I’ll go mad. But I won’t stay here. I have no intention of staying.’
Nell stood open-mouthed.This whole conversation with Mary had surprised her but nothing so much as the authority with which her sister had spoken the last words. This was no idle fancy spoken in the heat of temper. In fact, Mary wasn’t angry. More impassioned. ‘Where do you think you’re going to go?’
There was a pause before Mary said, ‘Somewhere. I don’t know. But it’ll be a long way from here, that’s for sure.’
‘But-but you’re thirteen.’
‘I don’t mean tomorrow, Nell.’
It was sarcastic and Nell flushed.‘I know you don’t mean tomorrow,’ she said sharply, ‘more’s the pity. You cause more trouble than a cartload of monkeys and you couldn’t care less. Talk about selfish. And the way you are about Eve! She’s been so good to you but you don’t see it, do you? You take and take and take. You make me sick and that’s the truth.’
Mary stared at her. ‘You’ve always hated me.’
‘Don’t be daft.’There was something in her sister’s face that suddenly made Nell feel acutely uncomfortable. ‘I don’t.’
The stricken look faded and Mary’s demeanour changed. ‘But I don’t care. I don’t need you or Eve or anyone.’
‘I don’t hate you,’ Nell repeated. ‘I don’t like you someti
mes I admit, but I don’t hate you, you’re my sister.’ She drew in a long breath before she said, ‘If you’re determined to go when you’re older I suppose that’s up to you but in the meantime couldn’t you try and fit in here? It would make things easier for everyone, including you. And . . . and don’t say anything to Eve about leaving. She loves you. We all do,’ she added a little lamely.
Mary bit on her lip but any reply she would have made was lost as they heard the back door open, and the next moment Eve and Caleb came into the kitchen.
Chapter 10
On the surface the next eighteen months were mostly ones of peaceful co-existence for the occupants of the Sun Inn. The year 1913 came and went, and as 1914 dawned the threat of civil war in Ireland and the grim prospect of war in Europe as the arms race gathered momentum barely touched the lives of the little community in Washington. It was incidents like a pit explosion in Wales when walls of flame and deadly methane gas took over four hundred lives, or the more militant suffragettes burning down a church in Scotland that were talked about.
The possibility of wars far away over the water were too remote, too distant to impinge on the lives of ordinary working men and women for more than a minute or two. But the rich owners of the collieries doing nothing about working conditions and spending nothing on safety, and the fight for women to have recognition within the law - these things were real. Who hadn’t lost a member of their family or a friend at some time or other to the pit? And what woman alive didn’t sometimes feel resentful that the scales were so firmly weighted on the side of men? There was unrest of some sort or other all over the country, and it began to gather steam as spring struggled to make itself felt.
March came in like a lion and went out like one too, with icy buffeting easterly winds and sleet, and occasional flurries of snow.An infant spring advanced through April although the month was cold and rainy, and even May was on the chilly side, frosts refusing to give up their grip on the north-east every night. Then in the last week of May the weather changed for the better. Everywhere in the lanes and fields of Durham the scent of wild flowers in profusion filled the air, stitchwort, white dead-nettle and other flowers of mid-spring joined by emergent yellow buttercups, cow parsley, hedge mustard and cowslips.
In the town of Washington, the sudden appearance of days of constant sunshine and dry air brought a sigh of relief. The sun began to accomplish the long awaited job of baking the thick mud in the back lanes and dirt streets. Once again the housewife could let her clean washing blow on the line in the fresh air rather than having it draped over a clothes horse in the kitchen, thereby turning the room into a steam parlour. It had been a long, hard, relentless winter, but it was over.
Along with the arrival of summer came changes in the lives of Eve and her sisters. At the beginning of June, in the week that saw railway and mine workers join builders on strike and two million men and boys laid off, Nell married her Toby.
It was a small wedding at the local parish church with a breakfast at the inn afterwards. Nell, decked in white, was rosy-faced and happy, and Toby was like a dog with two tails. Caleb gave the bride away and Eve and Mary were bridesmaids in simple dresses of deep blue. The day was a torment for Eve. Not only was she losing Nell who had been her best friend as well as her sister, she was acutely aware of the marked contrast between herself and Mary in their identical frocks. But she could do nothing about that. Not for the world would she have upset Nell by refusing to be her bridesmaid, and not by word or gesture did she reveal how she was feeling. She smiled and chatted her way through the day until the time came when Nell and her new husband left the inn for the two-up, two-down house they were renting in Spout Lane. They had only been able to furnish the kitchen and one bedroom and now that Toby was on strike there would be no spare money at all. Nevertheless, there had been no question of Nell suggesting to Toby that she continue at the inn once they were wed. Nell was marrying a miner. She knew he was of the opinion no man worth his salt would allow his wife to work outside the home.
Up in the attic bedroom that would now be just hers and Mary’s, Eve helped Nell gather the last of her things together. Once everything was neatly packed in the big cloth bag, Nell straightened. Careless of her wedding finery she pulled Eve to her, hugging her hard and with tears. ‘I’ll miss you so much.You will come and see me often, won’t you? It’s barely a five-minute walk. Promise me you’ll come, Eve.’
‘Course I will and you know where we are too. You can come for a cuppa or a bite to eat anytime.’
‘Aye, I know. Oh, lass, I wish you were coming an’ all.’
‘I don’t somehow think that’s what Toby’s got in mind.’
They smiled through their tears, Nell giggling weakly. ‘I hate the thought of leaving you here by yourself.’
‘Don’t be daft, I’m not by myself.’ But she knew what Nell meant and already she felt lonely.
Mary appeared in the doorway, as beautiful as a summer’s day, her blonde hair flowing down her back. ‘Toby said to hurry up. He’s champing at the bit down there.’
‘Aye, I’m coming.’ As she reached Mary, Nell hugged her, too, but briefly. ‘You two look after each other. All right?’
Mary stared at Nell, and Nell stared back at her. The exchanged glance declared they were both remembering what had been said the night Eve and Caleb had gone looking for Nicholas Taylor. ‘Have you said goodbye to Caleb’s mam?’ Mary asked into the pause which was getting uncomfortable.
‘No.’ Nell picked up her cloth bag. ‘And I’m not going to either, vicious old biddy.’
Mildred had forever alienated Nell by assuming she was having to get married when Nell had told her of her wedding plans at the beginning of the year. There had been a heated exchange which had culminated in Nell telling Caleb’s mother she would never set foot in her room again. She never had.
‘I think she’s got something for you. A sugar bowl and spoon.’
‘She can stick her sugar bowl and spoon where the sun don’t shine ’cos I don’t want it.’
‘Nell, perhaps it would be better to accept the olive branch if she has got something for you?’ Eve said quietly.
Nell turned and looked at her sister, her beloved sister. She didn’t want to hurt Eve but it had to be said. ‘I don’t have to try and pacify her or put up with her whims and fancies anymore,’ she said simply. ‘She’s a hateful old woman and the only person in the world she likes is Mary. You know that as well as I do. And I loathe her, lass. That’s the truth of it.’
‘She’s old, Nell.’
‘So are lots of folk but it doesn’t make them like Caleb’s mam. She would have been a nasty bit of work when she was young and she’s a nasty bit of work now. She looks on gentleness and kindness in a person as weakness and she despises them for it.’
‘Charming.’ Mary was visibly affronted. ‘So I’ve got neither of those qualities then according to you if she likes me so much.’
‘I didn’t say that. Now did I?’
‘Not in so many words, no, but that’s what you meant.’
‘Don’t tell me what I meant.’
‘And don’t treat me as though I’m half sharp, Nell.’
The conversation was brought to an abrupt halt by the sound of Eve laughing. As her sisters’ eyes swung to her, she shook her head at them. ‘At least some things never change. The sky could fall in and the earth swallow us up but still you two would spend your last seconds arguing.’
Nell and Mary smiled sheepishly. Eve walked over and put her arms round them and the three hugged, Nell and Mary united for a rare moment.
They filed downstairs and joined the wedding party in the main room of the inn. Eve watched as Caleb’s gaze immediately went to Mary. It had been the same all day, he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her. She couldn’t blame him. Mary looked enchanting. The cut of the bridesmaids’ dresses which the three girls had sewn themselves, along with Nell’s wedding dress, showed Mary’s tiny waist and full high b
reasts off to best advantage, and the cornflower blue exactly matched her eyes. She always looked fetching whatever she wore but today she was exquisite. And to give Mary her due, she had tried to stay in the background and let Nell have the limelight, Eve thought. She had noticed that and had made a mental note to thank her sister once they were alone.
Nell and Toby were making the short journey to their rented house in Caleb’s horse and cart which had been decorated with wild flowers and greenery. Even Rosie, the horse, had a topknot of bright flowering whorls of bird’s-foot trefoil, the yellow and golden-orange pea-like flowers dazzling in the sunshine. Amid somewhat ribald shouts of encouragement to Toby for the night ahead from his pit mates, and general good wishes from the rest of the wedding party, the couple climbed into the seat of the cart. Then Caleb led the horse out of the inn yard and through the village centre; everyone followed, throwing rose petals and clusters of creamy white blossoms from dogwood and elder. Once the horse and cart had turned into Spout Lane, the wedding guests shouted their good-byes, and Eve’s last sight of Nell was her sister’s radiant face as she turned to wave.
‘He’ll make her happy, lass. Have no doubts about that.’ Mrs Grant, Toby’s mother, was standing by Eve and Mary as they watched the cart disappear into the distance. ‘Fair barmy about your Nell, my lad is.’
‘I know that, Mrs Grant.’ Eve smiled through her tears. ‘And she loves him very much.’
‘Aye, Jack for a Jill, they are. Course it’s not the best start with the men coming out on strike the very week they get married, but you come from mining stock, don’t you? You know all about strikes and what have you.’
Mary had not joined in the conversation, standing slightly apart from the other two women. Now she made a small sound in her throat. It could have meant anything but Eve realised Toby’s mother had got the measure of Mary when she looked at her and said, ‘A working man has to do what he can to try and force a decent wage out of them owners, m’girl. Don’t be mistaken about that.And there’s nowt wrong with a man providing for his family whatever job he does.You’d be quick to complain if there was no coal for a fire, now then.’
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