The Collier’s Wife

by Chrissie Walsh

  ‘Leas. As I said, I’m closing.’

  Hubert, unaffected by Jude’s terse response asked, ‘Do you live above the premises?’

  Jude gave a monosyllabic ‘no’ and went and stood by the door, keys in hand.

  Hubert sauntered towards the door, and as he drew level with Jude, he said, ‘You Jews are all the same.’

  Jude looked bemused.

  ‘Jew,’ Hubert repeated, making the word sound dirty. Before Jude could respond, he bounded up the steps and into the street.

  ‘So that’s what’s eating you – you’re an anti-semite,’ Jude said to himself as he slammed the door behind him, savagely twisting the key in the lock. He detested bigotry. He’d come across it in the army, chaps who hated anyone they perceived to be different from themselves, those with brown skin or Jewish origins tormented the most. As Jude walked home mulling over the peculiar exchange, he made a mental note to keep his eye on Hubert Crank.

  *

  ‘It’s beautiful, Maggie,’ said Amy, her palm supporting Maggie’s outstretched left hand as she admired the engagement ring on her niece’s finger. ‘Congratulations to both of you. Be happy.’ Stephen blushed and shuffled his feet.

  ‘Let’s have a look at it then.’ Jude was seated at the table scanning a large, old leather-bound volume, a recent find on a day out with Noah to the auctions in Leeds. Swinging round in his chair he beckoned to his eighteen-year-old niece to come close, his eyes twinkling wickedly.

  Maggie crossed the room and proffered her hand. Jude lifted the magnifying glass he had been using, and placing it over the ring on Maggie’s finger, he gasped. ‘By God, Maggie! Diamonds as big as the crown jewels.’

  ‘You cheeky bugger,’ said Maggie, withdrawing her hand and laughing merrily as she squinted at the minute diamonds. ‘They might be small but me an’ Stephen don’t believe in wasting money just so we can show off.’

  ‘Very wise too.’ Amy gave Jude a warning glare.

  ‘It’s lovely, Maggie,’ he said contritely and then, by way of making amends he added, ‘I didn’t buy Amy one. I couldn’t afford to.’

  ‘I’d never have been able to afford one either if I hadn’t got the job with the Barnborough Chronicle.’ Always a peacemaker, Stephen was keen to show he took no offence at Jude’s playfulness. He really is the nicest young man, thought Amy. Jude gave him a smile filled with admiration.

  ‘It’s a job I wouldn’t have minded having when I was your age,’ he said, ‘and before you know it you’ll be their political editor, travelling up to London to report on what’s going on in the government. We’re proud of you, lad.’

  Yet again Stephen blushed, and muttered his thanks then shrugged before saying, ‘Last week I reported on a tailor’s shop that had been deliberately set on fire after whoever did it had slashed all the suits to shreds, and today I was reporting on a church that was vandalised last night, out Melborough way. Whoever did it made a right mess. There’s some crazy people out there.’

  Jude sniggered. ‘Aye, well, it was the 1st of April yesterday – all fool’s day. By the way, talking of fools. What do you know about that fellow, Hubert Crank?’ He told them about the altercation in the shop.

  ‘He’s barmy,’ Stephen said sneeringly. He put his index finger to his temple and made a winding motion. Laughing out loud, Kezia copied his action. ‘He styles himself as something of a radical. He stands outside college dishing out leaflets and making crazy speeches. He’s recruiting for a looney society who hate Catholics, Jews, black people, you name it – they hate the lot of them.’

  ‘He sounds thoroughly disgusting,’ Amy said, and then sent Kezia upstairs on the pretext of checking on John before she heard any more. Her perspicacious daughter’s habit of storing and then repeating conversations she had overheard sometimes caused embarrassment or downright unpleasantness. Only the other day she had unwittingly told Noah it was a wonder he didn’t get buried in all the clutter in his sitting room, a remark Amy had made to Jude after she had gone there to take Noah some buns she had baked that morning.

  ‘If he shows his face again I’ll soon give him his marching orders,’ said Jude, rubbing one fisted hand in the palm of the other and imagining it to be Hubert’s face. ‘It’s not as though he’s a customer – he’s never bought a thing.’

  *

  The next day, it being a Saturday and with Stephen otherwise occupied, Maggie volunteered to look after John and Kezia, leaving Amy free to serve in the shop. In the late afternoon, it being gloriously warm for April, she put John in his pushchair and they walked down Bankside Street to the Book Cellar. Kezia was skipping alongside keeping up a lively stream of chatter, but Maggie wasn’t listening. She was thinking about the conversation Jude and Stephen had had the day before and worrying for Stephen’s safety. Today he was reporting on a lock-out at a local pit, the miners protesting for better wages and working conditions. As they neared the shop, she saw Hubert Crank lounging at the top of the steps, his pale, shifty eyes watching their approach. He made no attempt to move out of their way. Kezia gave him a dirty look and wiggled her finger round her temple as she shoved past. Maggie wrinkled her nose, repulsed by his smell as she squeezed by, bumping the pushchair down the steps into the basement.

  ‘He’s hanging about outside, an’ he stinks,’ Maggie announced, seeing there were no customers in the shop.

  ‘Who?’ Amy glanced up from the low bookshelf she was tidying.

  ‘That smelly man with the scraggy red beard and shifty eyes,’ piped Kezia. She had no sooner spoken than Hubert sidled into the shop.

  Jude strode over to him.

  ‘Can I help you, Mr Crank?’ The jaded question had a threatening edge to it and Jude’s glowering expression reminded Amy of the days in Beckett’s Park when Jude had had one of his bitter episodes. She cringed, wringing her hands and wondering if she should intervene before Jude exploded.

  ‘Just looking,’ Hubert drawled, pulling a book from the shelf and letting it drop.

  ‘Not anymore, you aren’t.’ Jude steered him towards the door, his features tight with anger. ‘I don’t object to anyone just looking but I do expect them to treat the books with respect.’

  ‘Respect! Why should anybody respect you? You rotten Jews are all the same. You think because you own the banks and the fancy jewellery shops and run big businesses that you have a right to tell us what to do. But not me, I hate Jews and everything about them.’

  ‘Get out!’ Jude thundered, hustling Hubert through the doorway and up the steps, not letting go until they reached street level. With one almighty shove he sent Hubert sprawling on the pavement, watching with satisfaction as the miscreant scrambled to his feet and ran.

  Jude bounded back into the shop. ‘That’s got rid of him.’

  ‘He’s bloody crazy,’ Maggie cried, her green eyes flashing angrily.

  ‘He’s certainly unstable,’ said Amy, ‘and thank goodness there were no customers to witness his outburst.’ Or yours Jude, she silently added, the violent display making her feel sick. Did he still feel a pain so great that the slightest word or look could trigger his anger and revive the horrendous memories he had struggled to forget? But rather than seething with temper Jude seemed elated, laughing as he picked up the book Hubert had dropped and then saying, ‘There’s never a dull moment in the place.’

  Amy breathed a sigh of relief.

  *

  Later that evening, Stephen called to see Maggie. She cried when she saw his bruised face. ‘Who did that to you?’ she shrieked, pulling him into her arms. ‘Whoever it was’ll have me to deal with if I ever catch the buggers.’

  ‘It turned out rough then,’ Jude said, giving Stephen a sympathetic wry smile.

  Stephen gratefully accepted the cup of tea Amy had shoved into his hand and then grinned. ‘Just a flying stone,’ he said casually. ‘I didn’t move quickly enough when all hell broke loose.’

  ‘Who threw it?’ Maggie demanded.

  Stephen laughed. ‘G
od knows, it was mayhem once the pit owner’s hired thugs arrived.’

  ‘It’s history repeating itself,’ Jude reflected. ‘T’miners have always had to fight for their rights. You make sure you write a bloody good story defending ’em,’ Jude said.

  ‘I will,’ he said, rubbing the bruise on his cheek and chuckling. ‘I never imagined writing for a newspaper could be dangerous.’

  ‘An’ I never thought selling books would be. I had a run-in with that chap Crank this afternoon. I threw him out of the shop.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Stephen. ‘His sort are nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Me Uncle Jude saw him off all right,’ Maggie said proudly. ‘He’ll not be back. And the next time you’re out on an assignment, you keep out of trouble. I couldn’t bear it if owt bad happened to you.’

  34

  ‘I’ve seen that man again.’ Kezia dumped her satchel and topcoat on a chair. ‘He was standing across the road at the end of Mrs Booth’s alley and staring across at the Book Cellar like somebody not right in the head.’

  Her attention focused on the envelope in her hand, Amy only half-listened to her daughter who always found plenty to comment on. At ten, she was still diminutive but her heart-shaped face and her dark eyes, bright with learning and natural curiosity, frequently drew admiring glances from customers in the Book Cellar. Not that Kezia noticed. She was too busy making her own observations.

  ‘I saw him yesterday as well, not here in the street but behind the house on the riverbank,’ Kezia continued, helping herself to milk and biscuits.

  Reluctantly, Amy broke the seal on the envelope and withdrew the sheets of flimsy paper. ‘Who?’ she asked distractedly. ‘Who are you talking about?’

  Kezia sighed, exasperated. ‘Scruffy Red Beard: him who hates Jews and Catholics. He always hurries off when he sees me and knows I’ve seen him.’ She waited for what she reckoned would be an interested response. When none came she cried, ‘You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘I’ll listen in a minute,’ her mother replied distantly as she unfolded the pages in her hand. The letter was from Isaac. She recognised the postmark and the handwriting; now all she had to do was read the dreaded contents.

  For three happy years they’d lived in Isaac’s house, two years longer than expected and, presuming this letter would inform them of his return, Amy hated the thought of having to read words telling them they would have to move.

  ‘I think he’s spying on us,’ Kezia persisted, helping herself to another biscuit and somewhat surprised that her mother wasn’t telling her to put it back.

  Amy heard her daughter’s voice but the words didn’t register, lost as she was in a euphoric haze, her heart dancing and tears blurring her vision.

  ‘Isaac isn’t coming back. He wants us to buy the house! We don’t have to move after all.’ She flung the letter on the table, laughing and crying as she hugged Kezia. Then she lifted John in her arms and together they ran to the Book Cellar to tell Jude and Noah the news. In her excitement at not having to leave the house in Bankside Street, Kezia forgot all about Hubert Crank.

  When Maggie dropped into the Book Cellar on her way home from the surgery she was delighted to hear the news although she would soon be looking for a home of her own. She and Stephen were getting married in August. ‘I’m glad for you, Auntie Amy,’ she said, giving her a hug and then rounding up her young cousins. ‘I’ll take these two with me and have a celebratory tea waiting for you when you come home.’

  Left alone, Amy and Jude rejoiced at their good fortune and just before they closed the Book Cellar they stood, arms linked, gazing wondrously at all they had achieved. Kipling, Forster, D.H. Lawrence, Arnold Bennett, H.G. Wells and many more lined the shelves, along with a ready supply of cheap secondhand books, magazines and comics, for they remained loyal to their initial motives and their customers from the market. Now, standing back to admire the latest delivery from the Union Jack Library they blessed Sexton Blake and his thrilling intrigues and then locked the shop, walking home to a house that they soon would own.

  *

  His long vigil over, the shrouded figure furtively waited in the passageway opposite the Book Cellar. Nervously, he fingered his scruffy red beard and then plunged his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, feeling for his means of revenge. He had watched Jude and Amy lock up some hours before and sneered at their departing backs. They hadn’t seen him; not this time or any of the occasions he’d lingered in Bankside Street over the past fortnight. Only that brat of a daughter appeared to be aware of his existence. Whenever their paths crossed she pulled a face and stuck out her tongue, the ignorant Jewish peasant.

  Burning with revulsion, Hubert pictured them seated round the table in the house further along the street, warm and well fed, sure of their position in life, afraid of nothing, not even the dark, for hadn’t he once peered through their undrawn curtains, watching and hating. Hating them like he hated the Jewish landlord who had turned him and his mother out on the street because they couldn’t pay the rent, or like the Jew who ran the sweatshop where his mother had worked until she died, her lungs choked with fibres from the cloth she sewed into coats. They had infiltrated his country, making it their own, just like the Irish priest who had turned him out of the church one cold, winter night when he had nowhere else to sleep. He hated them all.

  Hubert fingered the box of matches in one pocket and the paraffin-soaked rags in the other and then picked up the iron bar at his feet, his evil thoughts lighting his face with a demonic smile. ‘Well, you who have everything in life will soon find out what it’s like to have nothing. I lost my home and my mother. Now it’s your turn.’

  *

  Muffled shouts and thuds became part of Jude’s nightmare as he struggled to dig his way out of an endless trench, German soldiers at his back. He wakened lathered in sweat, the black hole and the Germans gone but the hammering and yelling persisting.

  ‘Fire! Fire!’

  Leaping out of bed he dived into his trousers, and shaking Amy by the arm he dashed out of the bedroom. No smoke, no smell of burning. Where was the fire?

  Amy, eyes fearful, hair awry, joined him on the landing crying, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Get the bairns and Maggie,’ Jude urged, plunging downstairs, along the hallway to the reverberating front door.

  ‘T’bookshop’s afire,’ gabbled a pyjama-clad neighbour.

  Jude’s grief-stricken roar rocketed up to Amy at the head of the stairs. With John in her arms and Kezia and Maggie at her heels she descended frantically, and from the open doorway she watched her demented husband haring up the street, bawling like a bull to the slaughter. ‘Stay with the children,’ she ordered Maggie, and flinging a coat over her nightdress she followed him.

  Doors in Bankside Street opened, bands of light lancing the pavement as she ran. Outside the Book Cellar a small gathering of neighbours, coats over their nightclothes, gazed in dismay at the smoke and flames belching up the basement steps. ‘Waken Noah and get him out,’ Jude bawled to a man in the crowd. Then, barging past them Jude hurtled down the steps and, heedless of his own safety, he unlocked the door and rushed inside. The window display was ablaze.

  Oblivious to the swirling smoke, he dashed into the storeroom. One mighty shove sent the table crashing into the rear wall, freeing the rug from under its legs. Back in the shop he tossed the rug over the burning books to smother the flames, stamping on it with both feet.

  Whoosh! A trail of hungry flames crept insidiously along a shelf to his left. Out of his eye corner, Jude saw Amy wielding a furled umbrella left behind by a customer. ‘Go back,’ he yelled, but Amy paid him no heed. She continued raking books from the shelves nearest to the window with the umbrella’s curved handle, creating a break that left the hungry flames with nothing to burn.

  The window display now a blackened mass of charred books and the scorched rug, Jude left off stamping. ‘Are you all right, love?’ he cried, clutching Amy’s shoulders and pulling
her into the safety of his arms. Thick, black smoke swirled round their feet, rising steadily towards the low ceiling.

  ‘Grand,’ she panted, her eyes streaming and her throat raw from the fumes. She leaned her weight against his firm body and felt the thud of his heart against her own. Her panic subsided only to rise again as, over his shoulder she spotted a trail of flames flickering in the fug, licking their way along the varnished floorboards.

  ‘Behind you,’ she cried, leaping away from him. Jude swung round, and like a manic rumba dancer began stamping again. By now, the shop was filled with smoke so dense that they could barely see one another. Feeling her way to the storeroom, Amy found a bucket, filled it, and stumbled blindly back into the shop towards Jude. Using both hands to tilt the bucket she sloshed the water from it, Jude letting out a yell as it cascaded down his back.

  ‘Are you trying to drown me?’ he said, feeling for her and both of them laughing foolishly as the clanging of a bell signalled the arrival of the fire brigade. ‘Better late than never,’ said Amy, too exhausted to summon any more emotion.

  ‘Don’t start pumping water all over the place, t’fires out,’ Jude cried, as the firemen clattered into the shop, one dragging a hose and another a hand pump. ‘Wait for the smoke to settle before you start doing owt an’ causing more damage.’ The firemen glanced at one another, nonplussed.

  Gradually, the smoke cleared enough for them to properly assess the situation.

  ‘Just douse this lot here and check there,’ said Jude, pointing to the charred mess in the window and the smoking shelves. ‘It didn’t reach any further, and we might be able to salvage all the other books – but not if you wet ’em.’

  Cautiously, one of the firemen lifted the corner of the singed rug with the toe of his boot. Smoke swirled upwards, but no flames. The acrid smell of paraffin stung their noses. ‘This were started deliberately,’ he said.

  Amy and Jude exchanged alarmed glances.

  The fireman sifted through the debris, his gloved fingers prodding the piles of burned paper. ‘Ah ah!’ he cried triumphantly, holding up the remains of a length of charred rag and waving it about. The smell of paraffin grew stronger. ‘This is your culprit,’ he said, ‘and whoever put it here did so by shoving it through that hole in the window.’